Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (25 page)

“No, I didn't feel that,” Felton said seriously.

“You are being very careful here, Mr. Felton,” the Secretary observed, “but you have trained yourself to be a very close-mouthed person. So far as we are able to ascertain, not even your immediate family has ever heard of man-plus. That's a commendable trait.”

“Possibly and possibly not. It's been a long time,” Felton said coldly. “Just what do you mean by ‘ascertain? How have you been able to ascertain whether or not I am close-mouthed? That interests me, Mr. Secretary.”

“Please don't be naïve, Mr. Felton.”

“I have practiced being naive for a lifetime,” Felton said. “It's really not very sensitive on your part to ask me to change in a moment sitting here in front of you. I find that a degree of naïvete fits well with close-mouthedness. What did it come to, Mr. Secretary? Was my mail examined?”

“Now and then,” the Secretary admitted.

“My offices bugged?”

“At times.”

“And my home?”

“There have been reasons to keep you under observation, Mr. Felton. We do what is necessary. What we do has received large and unnecessary publicity; so I see no point in your claiming ignorance.”

“I am sure you do what is necessary.”

“We must, and I hope that this will not interfere with our little conversation today.”

“It doesn't surprise me. So, in that direction at least, it will not interfere. But just what is this conversation and what are we to talk about?”

“Your sister.”

“I see, my sister,” Felton nodded. He did not appear surprised.

“Have you heard from your sister lately, Mr. Felton?”

“No, not for almost a year.”

“Does it alarm you, Mr. Felton?”

“Does what alarm me?”

“The fact that you have not heard from your sister in so long?”

“Should it alarm me? No, it doesn't alarm me. My sister and I are very close, but this project of hers is not the sort of thing that allows for frequent social relations. Add to that the fact that my residence is in England, and that, while I do make trips to America, most of my time is spent in London and Paris. There have been long periods before when I have not heard from my sister. We are indifferent letter writers.”

“I see,” Eggerton said.

“Then I am to conclude that my sister is the reason for my visit here?”

“Yes.”

“She is well?”

“As far as we know,” Eggerton replied quietly.

“Then what can I do for you?”

“Help us if you will,” Eggerton said just as quietly. He was visibly controlling himself—as if he had practiced with himself before the meeting and had conditioned himself not to lose his temper under any circumstances, but to remain quietly controlled, aloof and polite. “I am going to tell you what has happened, Mr. Felton, and then perhaps you can help us.”

“Perhaps,” Felton agreed. “You must understand, Mr. Eggerton, that I don't admire either your methods or your apparent goal. I think you would be wrong to look upon me as an ally. I spent the first twenty-four years of my life in the United States. Since then I have lived abroad with only infrequent visits here. So, you see, I am not even conditioned by what you might think of as a patriotic frame of mind. I am afraid that, if anything, I am a total internationalist.”

“That doesn't surprise me, Mr. Felton.”

“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 exclusive-ness, 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 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. 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 American society.”