Chinese Gordon chuckled. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Of course I do.”
“‘IN THE FIELD STUDIES done under the ULTRA program, 1955–1970, in Oaxaca State (Mexico), Tennessee (U.S.), and elsewhere (see appendices I through IX), it was established that a battery of sociometric methodologies yielded surprisingly high indices of correlation.’”
“Where’s the footnote page?” said Margaret, crawling across the bed to leaf through the box of papers. “Here it is.”
“The coefficient of dullness is right up there.” Chinese Gordon scratched his belly. “I’m not surprised somebody punched the little bastard in the throat.”
Margaret knelt on the bed and read,
In the early tests it was found that traditional participant-observer methodologies yielded low interrater reliability figures. Beginning in the Tennessee studies of 1958, a system of statistical demographics was applied in which the number of displaced persons was recorded at each stage of the stimulation period. A team of interviewers was placed in the field stations where those who left the area went to apply for temporary shelter, food, and other necessities. Subjects were told that the questions were intended to establish their eligibility for federal assistance. The reasons the subjects gave for their actions were used to validate the hypothesis that a specific stimulus had been the independent variable, causing them to panic. It was found that a sampling of as low as one percent yielded correlation coefficients well within the acceptable range (.65–.9) if the sample was at least one hundred subjects.
“We’re getting nowhere,” said Chinese Gordon. “He waited for a flood and went down and asked people if it bothered them.”
“No. He calls it a ‘stimulation period’ in a ‘target area.’ Maybe he explains it in an appendix. Where’d you put the appendices?”
“They’re in the box.” He crawled to the foot of the bed and stared into the box. Doctor Henry Metzger was curled up on the thick stack of papers, already asleep, his nose touching the toes of his hind feet, his tail fluttering slightly as he stalked some luscious prey whose only habitat was Doctor Henry Metzger’s dreams. “Come on, you worthless pelt,” said Chinese Gordon. “Pile your flea-bitten ass on something else.” He reached into the box to lift the cat. Doctor Henry Metzger gave an annoyed little cry, and Chinese Gordon froze.
It was his right leg, just above the ankle. He didn’t have to look. The instant he felt it, an image formed in his brain. The hot, wet pressure clamped around his leg was enough. The teeth barely touched the skin, and the tongue was lolling out of the side of the gaping mouth, dangling against his heel. The great black beast made no sound. Slowly Chinese Gordon turned his head to look over his shoulder at the dog. A big black eye stared back at him. “He’s got me,” said Chinese Gordon quietly. “The goddamned cat has taught him how to climb stairs, and now the big son of a bitch is going to tear my leg off.”
“Really?” said Margaret. “That’s wonderful. What a clever kitty you are, Doctor Henry.” She snatched Doctor Henry Metzger out of Chinese Gordon’s hands and held him in her arms, petting him gently. Chinese Gordon could hear him purring smugly.
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” said Chinese. “When this monster kills me I want to take Doctor Henry Metzger with me.”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby. He’s only play-biting. He thinks it’s a game.” She turned to the dog, and her voice became whispery and melodious. “Game’s over, boy.” She smiled at Chinese Gordon. “It’s called on account of childishness.”
Chinese Gordon felt the dog’s jaws open and release his leg. Then the dog’s huge tongue licked his leg from ankle to knee. He decided it felt like a paintbrush.
Doctor Henry Metzger jumped to the floor and trotted out of the room, his tail in the air. The dog slowly followed, like a huge black shadow passing through the lighted doorway. As it moved down the stairs it sounded to Chinese Gordon like the footsteps of a man walking on his toes.
Chinese Gordon held up his hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Margaret reached into the box and thumbed through the papers, extracting some from the bottom. “That’s fine with me, Mr. Baby, sir. Here’s an appendix.”
Oaxaca. In these studies the stimuli were selected with reference to the standard ethnologies of the region (Smith, Gebhard, Rowlands). In the rural Tennessee studies the strong family bonding due to isolation and economic factors associated with subsistence farming, coupled with the history of the region, made the selection of a stimulus a simple matter: Theft of small children, combined with the rumor that this was being done by black city people for sexual purposes, was found to be sufficient. In the Mexican studies racial tensions were found not to be acceptable, nor was distrust of urban strangers found useful. The structure of peasant village society made visits from strangers pleasant occasions not to be feared (see Gebhard, 1947). There were, however, a number of exploitable vulnerabilities.
Smith (1962) had noted an ingrained terror of cannibalism, which he attributed to a combination of factors, including the practice beginning in the sixteenth century of Roman Catholic missionaries making explicit reference to the eating of human flesh by the Aztecs. The idea had achieved immense importance in the folklore of the region, partially because the references were also used to explain the concept of transubstantiation and the sacrament of communion. The society was obsessed with the image of cannibalism, both as the image of what people did under the influence of evil (demonic possession) and what people did in order to achieve salvation. It is a particularly interesting case because the village people of the region were ethnically Mayan. Ritual cannibalism had not been a characteristic of Mayan culture during the classical period, as it had been among the Aztec and the Tlaxcala.
Margaret stared at Chinese Gordon. She tossed the paper on the bed and took up another sheet. Now her arms were entwined, her left hand gripping her right shoulder as though hugging herself for protection from what she was reading. “‘Working with the Psychological Warfare team supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency, this researcher selected twelve villages with populations between one hundred and two hundred. It was agreed that the fear of cannibalism must be isolated from other fears, so the form selected was the eating of recently buried corpses.’” She threw down the sheet and shuddered. “It’s unbelievable.”
Chinese Gordon shrugged. “So try another section if that one’s not to your taste.”
She selected another and began to read.
The revision of the scale of measurement to encompass the competing factor of unforeseen genuine danger prompted the hypothesis that the ULTRA could be used in more complex urban societies. The 1954 coup in Guatemala was the first for which the Central Intelligence Agency had kept detailed sociological and methodological records. In 1959, after the sophistication of the ULTRA scales had reached a sufficient level, the Director’s office graciously made available to the project certain necessary records.
Porterfield stared out at the gigantic parking lot and beyond it, at Los Angeles International Airport, stretching for miles into the morning haze. This place had changed since the early sixties. In those days the chief of station in Los Angeles had been Paul Cameron, a World War II OSS man who’d spent the fifties in the Philippines, going old-style from one remote village to another through the jungle on foot, tending his counterinsurgency
