There Won't Be War

With the exhaustion of his supplies, Traven remained within the perimeter of the blocks almost continuously, conserving what strength remained to him to walk slowly down their empty corridors. The infection in his right foot made it difficult for him to replenish his supplies from the stores left by the biologists, and as his strength ebbed he found progressively less incentive to make his way out of the blocks. The system of megaliths now provided a complete substitute for those functions of his mind which gave to it its sense of the sustained rational order of time and space, his awareness kindled from levels above those of his present nervous system (if the autonomic system is dominated by the past, the cerebrospinal reaches toward the future). Without the blocks his sense of reality shrank to little more than the few square inches of sand beneath his feet.

On one of his last ventures into the maze, he spent all night and much of the following morning in a futile attempt to escape. Dragging himself from one rectangle of shadow to another, his leg as heavy as a club and apparently inflamed to the knee, he realized that he must soon find an equivalent for the blocks or he would end his life within them, trapped within this self-constructed mausoleum as surely as the retinue of Pharaoh.

He was sitting exhausted somewhere within the center of the system, the faceless lines of the tomb booths receding from him, when the sky was slowly divided by the drone of a light aircraft. This passed overhead, and then, five minutes later, returned. Seizing his opportunity, Traven struggled to his feet and made his exit from the blocks, his head raised to follow the glistening exhaust trail.

As he lay down in the bunker he dimly heard the aircraft return and carry out an inspection of the site.

A Belated Rescue

“Who are you?” A small sandy-haired man was peering down at him with a severe expression, then put away a syringe in his valise. “Do you realize you’re on your last legs?”

“Traven ... I’ve had some sort of accident. I’m glad you flew over.”

“I’m sure you are. Why didn’t you use our emergency radio? Anyway, we’ll call the Navy and have you picked up.”

“No ...” Traven sat up on one elbow and felt weakly in his hip pocket. “I have a pass somewhere. I’m carrying out research.”

“Into what?” The question assumed a complete understanding of Traven’s motives. Traven lay in the shade beside the bunker, and drank weakly from a canteen as Dr. Osborne dressed his foot.

“You’ve also been stealing our stores.”

Traven shook his head. Fifty yards away the blue and white Cessna stood on the concrete apron like a large dragonfly. “I didn’t realize you were coming back.”

“You must be in a trance.”

The young woman at the controls of the aircraft climbed from the cockpit and walked over to them, glancing at the gray bunkers and blocks. She seemed unaware of or uninterested in the decrepit figure of Traven. Osborne spoke to her over his shoulder, and after a downward glance at Traven she went back to the aircraft. As she turned Traven rose involuntarily, recognizing the child in the photograph he had pinned to the wall. Then he remembered that the magazine could not have been more than four or five years old.

The engine of the aircraft started. It turned onto one of the roadways and took off into the wind.

* * *

The young woman drove over by jeep that afternoon with a small camp bed and a canvas awning. During the intervening hours Traven had slept, and woke refreshed when Osborne returned from his scrutiny of the surrounding dunes.

“What are you doing here?” the young woman asked as she secured one of the guy ropes to the bunker.

“I’m searching for my wife and son,” Traven said.

“They’re on this island?” Surprised, but taking the reply at face value, she looked around her. “Here?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

After inspecting the bunker, Osborne joined them. “The child in the photograph. Is she your daughter?”

“No.” Traven tried to explain. “She’s adopted me.”

Unable to make sense of his replies, but accepting his assurances that he would leave the island, Osborne and the young woman returned to their camp. Each day Osborne returned to change the dressing, driven by the young woman, who seemed to grasp the role cast for her by Traven in his private mythology. Osborne, when he learned of Traven’s previous career as a military pilot, assumed that he was a latter-day martyr left high and dry by the moratorium on thermonuclear tests.

“A guilt complex isn’t an indiscriminate supply of moral sanctions. I think you may be overstretching yours.”

When he mentioned the name Eatherly, Traven shook his head.

Undeterred, Osborne pressed: “Are you sure you’re not making similar use of the image of Eniwetok—waiting for your pentecostal wind?”

“Believe me, Doctor, no.” Traven replied firmly. “For me the H-bomb is a symbol of absolute freedom. Unlike Eatherly I feel it’s given me the right—the obligation, even—to do anything I choose.”