The Daleth Effect

you invented?”

The silence lengthened, and Arnie could only stare miserably at his clenched hands, his knuckles whitening with the pressure. Gev’s words pulled at him, relentlessly.

“What is this silence? You can’t be afraid? You have nothing to fear from Eretz Israel, your homeland. Your friends, your work, your very life is there. You buried your wife there. Tell us what is wrong and we will help you. Come to us and we will aid you.”

Arnie’s words fell like cold stones into the silence.

“I… cannot.”

“You have to. You have no other choice. You are an Israeli and your work is Israeli. We are surrounded by an ocean of enemies and every man, every scrap of material is vital for our existence. You have discovered something powerful, something that will aid our survival. Would you remove it and see us all perish—the cities and the synagogues leveled to be a desert again? Is that what you want?”

“You know that I do not! Gev, let me be, get out of here and go back…”

“That I won’t do. I won’t let you be. If I am the voice of your conscience, so be it. Come home. We will welcome you. Help us as we helped you.”

“No! That is the thing I cannot do!” The words were pulled from his body, a gasp of pain. He went on quickly, as though the dam to his feelings had been broken and he could not stop.

“I have discovered something—I will not tell you how, why, what it is—a force. Call it a force, something that is perhaps more powerful, or could be more powerful than anything we know today. A force that can be used for good or evil because it is by nature that sort of thing, if I can develop it, and I think I can. I want it used for good—”

“Israel is evil! You dare suggest that?”

“No, hear me out, I did not say that. I mean only that Israel is the pawn of the world with no one on their side.

Oil. The Arabs have the oil, and the Soviets and the Americans want it and will play any dirty game to get it. No one cares for Israel, except the Arabs who wish to see her destroyed, and the world powers who also wish they could find a way to destroy her quietly, the thorn in their sides. Oil. War will come, something will happen, and if you have my—if you had this, what we are talking about, it would be used for destruction. You would use it, with tears in your eyes perhaps, but you would use it—and that would be absolute evil.”

“Then,” General Gev said, in a voice so low it was scarcely audible, “from pride, personal ambition, you will withhold this force and see your country perish? In your supreme egocentricity you think yourself more fit to make major policy decisions than the elected representatives of the people. You place yourself on a pillar. You are unique. Better able to decide the important issues than all the lesser mortals of the world. You must believe in absolute tyranny—your tyranny. In your arrogance you become a little Hitler…”

“Shut up!” Arnie shouted hoarsely, half rising from the chair. There was silence. He sat down again, slowly, aware that his face was flushed, a pulse hammering like a rivet gun in his temple. It took a great effort to speak calmly.

“All right. You are correct in what you say. If you wish to say that I no longer believe in democracy, say it. In this matter I don’t. I have made the decision and the responsibility is mine alone. To myself, perhaps as an excuse, I prefer to think of it as a humane act…”

“Mercy killing is also humane,” Gev said in a toneless voice.

“You are right, of course. I have no excuses. I have acted willfully and I accept the responsibility.”

“Even if Israel is destroyed through your arrogance?”

Arnie opened his mouth to answer, but there were no words. What could be said? Gev had him hemmed in from all sides, his retreat was cut off, his defenses destroyed. What could he do other than surrender? All that remained was the persistent conviction that, in the long run, he was doing the right thing. A conviction that he was afraid to test or examine lest it prove false as well. The silence grew and grew and a great sadness pushed down on Arnie so that he slumped in his chair.

“I do what I have to do!” he said, finally, in a voice hoarse with emotion. “I will not return. I have left Israel as I came, voluntarily. You have no hold on me, Gev, no hold…”

General Gev stood up, looking down upon the bowed head. His words were slow in coming and when he did speak, there was the echo of three thousand years of persecution, of death, of mourning, of a great, great sadness.

“You, a Jew, you could do this… ?”

There was no possible answer and Arnie remained silent. Gev was soldier enough to see defeat even though he could not understand it. He turned his back, he said nothing more, though what more could be said than this act of turning his back and leaving? He pushed the door open with his fingertips and did not touch it again, to close it or even slam it, but went straight out. Upright, marching, a man who had lost a battle, but who would never lose a war without dying first.

* * *

Ove came in and puttered around the room, stacking the magazines, pulling out a book then putting it back unopened, doing this for some minutes in silence. When he finally spoke it was about something else.

“Listen, what a day it is out. The sun’s shining, you can see for miles. You can see the girls’ skirts blowing up when they ride their bicycles. I’ve had enough of this filthy cafeteria food, I’m stuffed solid right up to here with rugbrod. I can’t face another sandwich. Let’s go to Langelinie Pavillonen for lunch. Watch the ships sail by. What do you say?”

There was a stricken look on Arnie’s face when he raised his head. He was not a man normally given to strong emotions of any kind, and he had no defenses, no way of dealing with what he now felt. There was the pain—written so clearly on his face that Ove had to turn away and push about the magazines so recently ordered.

“Yes, if you want to. We could have lunch out.” His voice was as empty of emotion as his face was lined with it.

They drove in silence down Norre Alle and through the park. It was indeed as Ove had said. The girls were on their high black bikes, flashes of color among the drab jackets of the men, pacing the car on the bicycle paths that bordered the wide street, sweeping in ordered rows across the intersections. Their long legs pumped and their skirts rode up freely and it was a lovely afternoon. Except that Arnie carried with him the memory of a great unhappiness. Ove twisted the little Sprite neatly through the converging traffic at Trianglen and down Osterbrogade to the waterfront. The car shot through a gap in the Langelinie traffic and braked under the rear of the Pavillonen restaurant. They were early enough to get a table at the great glass window that formed one wall. Ove beckoned to the waiter and ordered before they sat down. Even as they were pulling up their chairs a bottle of akvavit appeared, frozen in a block of ice, and a brace of frosted bottles of Tuborg Fine Festival beer.

“Here,” Ove said, as the waiter poured out two of the thimble-sized glasses of chilled snaps. “Drink this. I’ll bet you don’t see much of it in Tel-Aviv.”

“Skal,” they said in ritual unison, and drained the glasses. Arnie sipped at his beer afterward and looked out at the black and white ferry to Sweden, ploughing ponderously by. The buses were pulled up in a waiting row while the tourists clambered over the rocks for a ritual visit to the Little Mermaid, cameras eagerly ready. Beyond them the white sails of tiny yachts from the basin cut across the cold blue of the Sound. The sea. You could not go more than forty miles from it in Denmark, a seafaring, sea-girt nation if there ever was one. The white triangles of sails were dwarfed by a great liner tied up at Langeliniekaj. Flags and pennants gave her a rakish holiday air, and a sudden burst of steam rose from her front funnel. Moments later the distant moan of her horn could be dimly heard.

“A ship,” Arnie said and now, considering his work once again, all trace of what he had been feeling seemed to have vanished. “We need a ship. When we want to try out a larger…” He hesitated, and they both looked around with their eyes only, like conspirators, and when he went on it was in a lower voice.

“A larger unit. The first one is too small, a demonstration of theory only. But a big unit will have to be tested on a large scale, to see if we have anything here other than a stupid laboratory demonstration that blows up