Hunter and the Trap

by Howard Fast

  “On second thought, I realize that it wouldn’t. I am sure that you have investigated my residences, my frame of mind, my philosophy, and I would also guess that you have enough recordings of my conversations with my most intimate friends to know exactly what my point of view is.”

  The Secretary of Defense smiled as if to exhibit to Felton the fact that he, the Secretary of Defense, possessed a sense of humor. “No, not quite that much, Mr. Felton, but I must say that I am rather pleased by the respect you have for our methods. It is true that we know a good deal about you and it is also true that we could anticipate your point of view. However, we are not calling upon you in what some might term a patriotic capacity; we are calling upon you because we feel that we can appeal to certain instincts which are very important to you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Human beings, human decency, the protection of mankind, the future of mankind—subjects that cross national boundaries. You would agree that they do, would you not, Mr. Felton?”

  “I would agree that they do,” Felton said.

  “All right then; let us turn to your sister’s project, a project which has been under way so many years now. I don’t have to be hush-hush about it, because I am sure that you know as much concerning this project as any of us—more perhaps, since you were in at its inception. At that time, you were on the payroll of the project, and for a number of months you assisted your sister in the beginnings of the project. If I am not mistaken, part of your mission was to acquire certain infants which she needed at that stage of her experiment?”

  “The way you say ‘infants,’” Felton replied, smiling, “raises a suspicion that we wanted them to roast and devour. May I assure you that such was not the case. We were neither kidnappers nor cannibals; our motives were rather pure.”

  “I am sure.”

  “You don’t say it as if you were sure at all.”

  “Then perhaps I have some doubts, and perhaps you will share my doubts, Mr. Felton, when you have heard me out. What I intended to say was that surely you, of all people, realize that such a project as your sister undertook must be regarded very seriously indeed or else laughed off entirely. To date it has cost the Government of the United States upwards of one hundred and fourteen million dollars, and that is not something you laugh off, Mr. Felton.”

  “I had no idea the price was so high,” Felton said. “On the other hand, you may have gotten a hundred and fourteen million dollars worth for your money.”

  “That remains to be seen. You understand, of course, that the unique part of your sister’s project was its exclusiveness. That word is used advisedly and specifically. Your sister made the point again and again and again—and continues to make it, I may say—the point that the success of the project depended entirely upon its exclusiveness, upon the creation of a unique and exclusive environment. We were forced to accept her position and her demands—that is, if we desired the project at all; and it seems that the people who undertook to back the project did desire it. I say we, Mr. Felton, because ‘we’ is a term we use in government; but you must understand that that was a good many years ago, almost twenty years ago, and I myself, Mr. Felton, did not participate in its inception. Now, in terms of the specifications, in terms of the demands that were made and met, we agreed not to send any observers into the reservation for a period of fifteen years. Of course, during those fifteen years there have been many conferences with Mr. and Mrs. Arbalaid and with certain of their associates, including Dr. Goldbaum.”

  “Then, if there were conferences,” Felton said, “it seems to me that you know more about my sister than I do. You must understand that I have not seen my sister almost since the inception of the project.”

  “We understand that. Nevertheless, the relationship differs. Out of these conferences, Mr. Felton, there was no progress report that dealt with anything more than general progress and that in the most fuzzy and indefinite terms. We were given to understand that the results they had obtained in the reservation were quite rewarding and exciting, but little more, very little more indeed.”

  “That was to be expected. That’s the way my sister works; in fact, it’s the way most scientists work. They are engaged in something that is very special to them, very complicated, very difficult to explain. They do not like to give reports of the way stations they may arrive at. They like to complete their work and have results, proven results, before they report.”

  “We are aware of that, Mr. Felton. We honored our part of the agreement, and at the end of a fifteen-year period we told your sister and her husband that they would have to honor their part of the agreement and that we would have to send in a team of observers. We were as liberal, as flexible, as people in our position could be. We advised them that they would have the right to choose the observers, that they could even limit the path of the observers—limit what the observers would see and the questions the observers could ask—but that we would have to send in such a team.”

  “And did you?” Felton asked him.

  “No, we did not. That’s a tribute to the persuasive powers of your sister and her husband. They pleaded for an extension of time, maintaining that it was critical to the success of the entire program, and they pleaded so persuasively that in the end they did win a three-year extension. Some months ago, the three-year period of grace was over. Mrs. Arbalaid came to Washington and begged for a further extension. I was at the meeting where she was heard, and I can tell you, Mr. Felton, that never before in my life had I heard a woman plead for something with the fervor, the insistence, with which Mrs. Arbalaid pleaded for this further extension.”

  Felton nodded. “Yes, I imagine my sister would plead with some intensity. Did you agree?”

  “No. As I said, we refused.”

  “You mean you turned her down completely—entirely?”

  “Not as completely perhaps as we should have. She agreed—when she saw that she could not move us—that our team could come into the reservation in ten days. She begged the ten-day interval to discuss the matter with her husband and to choose the two people who would make up the observation team. The way she put it, we had to agree to it; and then she returned to California.”

  Eggerton paused and looked at Felton searchingly.

  “Well,” Felton said, “what happened then? Did my sister select competent observers?”

  “You don’t know?” Eggerton asked him.

  “I know some things. I’m afraid I don’t know whatever you’re interested in at this moment. I certainly don’t know what happened.”

  “That was three weeks ago, Mr. Felton. Your sister never chose observers; your sister never communicated with us again; in fact, we know nothing about your sister or her reactions or what she said to her husband because we have not heard from her since.”

  “That’s rather curious.”

  “That is exceedingly curious, Mr. Felton, far more curious than you might imagine.”

  “Tell me, what did you do when ten days went by and you didn’t hear from my sister?”

  “We waited a few days more to see whether it was an oversight on her part, and then we tried to communicate with her.”

  “Well?”

  “We couldn’t. You know something, Felton? When I think about what I’m going to tell you now I feel like a damn fool. I also feel a little bit afraid. I don’t know whether the fear or the fool predominates. Naturally, when we couldn’t communicate with your sister, we went there.”

  “Then you did go there,” Felton said.

  “Oh, yes, we went there.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t understand,” Felton said.

  “Didn’t I make myself plain, Mr. Felton? We went there and we found nothing.”

  “Oh?”

  “You don’t appear too surprised, Mr. Felton.”

  “Nothing my sister did ever really surprised me. You mean the reservation was empty—no sign of anything, Mr. Eg
gerton?”

  “No, I don’t mean that at all, Mr. Felton. I wish to God I did mean that. I wish it were so pleasantly human and down to earth and reasonable. I wish we thought or had some evidence that your sister and her husband were two clever and unscrupulous swindlers who had taken the Government for a hundred and fourteen million dollars. That would have been a joy, Mr. Felton. That would have warmed the cockles of our hearts compared to what we do have and what we did find. You see, we don’t know whether the reservation is empty or not, Mr. Felton, because the reservation is not there.”

  “What?”

  “Precisely. Exactly what I said. The reservation is not there.”

  “Oh, come on now,” Felton smiled. “My sister is a remarkable woman, but she doesn’t make off with eight thousand acres of land. It isn’t like her.”

  “I don’t find your humor entertaining at this moment, Mr. Felton.”

  “No. No, of course not. I’m sorry. I realize that this is hardly the moment for humor. Only a thing is put to me and the thing makes no sense at all—how could an eight-thousand-acre stretch of land not be where it was? Doesn’t that leave a damn big hole?”

  “It’s still a joke, isn’t it, Mr. Felton?”

  “Well, how do you expect me to react?” Felton asked.

  “Oh, you’re quite justified, Mr. Felton. If the newspapers got hold of it, they could do even better.”

  “Supposing you explain it to me,” Felton said. “We’re both guessing, aren’t we? Maybe we’re both putting each other on, maybe we’re not. Let’s be sensible about it and talk in terms that we both understand.”

  “All right,” the Secretary said, “suppose you let me try, not to explain—that’s beyond me—but to describe. The stretch of land where the reservation is located is in the Fulton National Forest: rolling country, some hills, a good stand of sequoia—a kidney-shaped area all in all, and very exclusive in terms of the natural formation. It’s a sort of valley, a natural valley, that contains within itself areas of high land, areas of low land, and flat areas as well. Water, too. It was wire-fenced. Around it was a three-hundred-yard wide neutral zone, and Army guards were stationed at every possible approach. I went out there last week with our inspection team: General Meyers; two Army physicians; Gorman, the psychiatrist; Senator Totenwell of the Armed Services Committee; and Lydia Gentry, the educator who is our present Secretary of Education. You will admit that we had a comprehensive and intelligent team that represented a fine cross-section of American society. At least, Mr. Felton, that is my opinion. I still have some veneration for the American society.”

  “I share your admiration, Mr. Secretary, if not your veneration. I don’t think that this should be a contest between you and me, re our attitudes toward the United States of America.”

  “No such contest intended, Mr. Felton. Let me continue. We crossed the country by plane and then we drove the final sixty miles to the reservation. We drove this distance in two Government cars. A dirt road leads into the reservation. The main guard, of course, is on that dirt road, and that road is the only road into the reservation, the only road that a vehicle could possibly take to so into the reservation. The armed guard on this road halted us, of course. They were merely doing their duty. The reservation was directly before us. The sergeant in charge of the guard approached the first car according to orders; and, as he walked toward our car, the reservation disappeared.”

  “Come on now,” Felton said.

  “I am trying to be reasonable and polite, Mr. Felton. I think the very least you could do is attempt to adopt the same attitude towards me. I said, ‘The reservation disappeared.’”

  “Just like that?” Felton whispered. “No noise—no explosion—no earthquake?”

  “No noise, no explosion, no earthquake, Mr. Felton. One moment a forest of sequoia in front of us—then a gray area of nothing.”

  “Nothing. Nothing is not a fact, Mr. Secretary. Nothing is not even a description; it’s simply a word and a highly abstract word.”

  “We have no other word for this situation.”

  “Well, you say ‘nothing.’ What do you mean? Did you try to go in? If there was nothing in front of you, did you try to go through this nothing?”

  “Yes, we tried. You can be very certain that we tried, Mr. Felton, and since then the best scientists in America have tried. I do not like to speak about myself as a brave man, but certainly I am not a coward. Yet believe me, it took a while for me to get up enough courage to walk up to that gray edge of nothing and touch it.”

  “Then you touched it?”

  “I touched it.”

  “If it was nothing, it seems to me you could hardly touch it. If you could touch it, it was something, certainly not nothing.”

  “If you wish, it was something. It blistered these three fingers.”

  He held out his hand for Felton to see. The first three fingers of his right hand were badly blistered.

  “That looks like a burn,” Felton said.

  “It is a burn. No heat and no cold, nevertheless it burned my hand. That kind of thing sets you back, Felton.”

  “I can appreciate that,” Felton said.

  “I became afraid then, Mr. Felton. I think we all became afraid. We continue to be afraid. Do you understand, Mr. Felton? The world today represents a most delicate and terrible balance of power. When news comes to us that the Chinese have developed an atomic weapon, we become afraid. Out of necessity, our diplomatic attitude must reflect such fear and our attitude toward the Chinese must change. When the French began their atomic stockpile, our attitude toward the French changed. We are a pragmatic and a realistic administration, Mr. Felton, and we do not lie about fear or abjure power; we recognize fear and power, and we are very much afraid of that damn thing out there in California.”

  “I need not ask you if you tried this or that.”

  “We tried everything, Mr. Felton. You know, I’m a little ashamed to say this, and it is certainly damned well not for publication—I trust you will honor my request in that direction, Mr. Felton—?”

  “I am not here as a reporter for the press,” Felton said.

  “Of course, yet this is very delicate, very delicate indeed. You asked whether we tried this or that. We tried things. We even tried a very small atomic bomb. Yes, Mr. Felton, we tried the sensible things and we tried the foolish things. We went into panic and we went out of panic and we tried everything we have and it all failed.”

  “And yet you have kept it a secret?”

  “So far, Mr. Felton, we have kept it a secret,” the Secretary agreed. “You cannot imagine what wire-pulling that took. We threw our weight here and there, and we threw our weight heavily, and we kept the secret—so far, Mr. Felton.”

  “Well, what about airplanes? You couldn’t bar access to it from the air, could you? You couldn’t cut off so wide a lane of air visibility that it would not be seen?”

  “No, we immediately observed it from the air; you can be sure we thought of that quickly enough. But when you fly above it you see nothing. As I said, the reservation is in a valley, and all you see is what appears to be mist lying in the valley. Perhaps it is mist—”

  Felton leaned back and thought about it.

  “Take your time,” the Secretary said to him. “We are not rushing you, Mr. Felton, and believe me we are not pressuring you. We want your coöperation and, if you know what this is, we want you to tell us what it is.”

  Finally Felton asked him, “What do your people think it is?”

  Eggerton smiled coldly and shook his head. “They don’t know. There you are. At first, some of them thought it was some kind of force field. I have since learned that force field is a generic term for any area of positive action not understood too well. But when they tried to work it out mathematically, the mathematics wouldn’t work. When they put it on the computers, the mathematics still refused to work. I don’t know the math, Mr. Felton. I’m not a physicist and I’m not a mathematician, so I’m mere
ly reporting what I have been told. And, of course, it’s cold, and they’re very upset about the fact that it’s cold. It seems to confuse them no end. Terribly cold. Don’t think only I am mumbling, Mr. Felton. As I said, I am neither a scientist nor a mathematician, but I can assure you that the scientists and the mathematicians also mumble. As for me, Mr. Felton, I am sick to death of the mumbling. I am sick to death of the double-talk and the excuses. And that’s why we decided that you should come to Washington and talk with us. We thought that you might know about this thing that bars us from the reservation, and you might be able to tell us what it is or tell us how to get rid of it.”

  “I haven’t the vaguest idea what it is,” Felton said, “but even if I had, what on earth makes you think that I would tell you how to get rid of it?”

  “Surely you don’t think it’s a good thing.”

  “How can I say whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing?” Felton asked him. “I haven’t the faintest notion of what it is, and I’m not sure that I know, in today’s scheme of things, what is good or what is bad.”

  “Then you can’t help us at all?”

  “I didn’t say that either. I just might be able to help you.”

  For the first time, Eggerton emerged from his lethargy, his depression. Suddenly he was excited and patient and overly cordial. He tried to force another drink on Felton. When Felton refused, he suggested that champagne be brought. Felton smiled at him, and the Secretary admitted that he was being childish.

  —“But you don’t know how you have relieved me, Mr. Felton.”

  “I don’t see why the little I said should relieve you. I certainly didn’t intend to relieve you, and I don’t know whether I can help you or not. I said I might help you.”

  Felton took a letter out of his pocket.

  “This came from my sister,” he said.

  “You told me you had no letter from her in almost a year,” the Secretary replied suspiciously.

  “Exactly. And I have had this letter for almost a year.” There was a note of sadness in Felton’s voice. “I haven’t opened it, Mr. Secretary, because when she sent it to me she enclosed it in a sealed envelope with a short letter. The letter said that she was well and quite happy, and that I was not to open or read the enclosed letter until it was absolutely necessary to do so. My sister is like that. We think the same way. I think that it’s necessary now, don’t you?”