Hunter and the Trap (17 page)

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. Eggerton?”

“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 merely 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?”

The Secretary nodded slowly but said nothing. His eyes were fixed on Felton. Felton scanned the letter, turned it over, and then reached toward the Secretary's desk where there was a letter opener. The Secretary made no move to help him. Felton took the opener, slit the letter and took out a sheaf of onionskin paper. He opened this sheaf of paper and he began to read aloud.

Chapter Seventeen

June 12, 1964

My dear Harry:

As I write this, it is twenty-two years since I have seen you or spoken to you. How very long for two people who have such love and regard for each other as we do! And now that you have found it necessary to open this letter and read it, we must face the fact that in all probability we will never see each other again unless we are most fortunate. And, Harry, I have watched so many miracles occur that I hesitate to dream of another. I know from your letters that you have a wife and three children, and I have seen their photographs. So far as I can tell, they are wonderful people. I think the hardest thing is to know that I will not see them or come to know them and watch them grow, and at least be some sort of sister to your wife.