The generals left without excusing themselves. Evidently they knew what was coming and wanted no part of it. The old Army game of signing your name and letting the sergeant hear the howls. I think that was the only thing that kept me there, as furious as I was, to hear what the old man had to say. He had been handed the dirty end of the stick, and he had to get rid of it the best way he could. When they were gone he circled a bit and then got the range. * * * * * Boiled down, it was like this. "As of right now, you no longer exist. There is no more Peter Ambrose Miller, and maybe there never was. This I would suggest; your wife, being human, could keep quiet no longer than any other woman--or man. As far as she is concerned you're no longer alive. You were killed while escaping arrest." The sheer brutality, the plain cruelty of that, almost drove me insane right there on the spot. I don't know what kept my hands off him. Now, of course, I realize that he was doing that deliberately to focus my hate on him, to present the bad side of it, to show me what could be done if I didn't cooperate. But I didn't know that then. "So if I've got the name I'll have the game! Does it make any difference if I get shot in report or in fact? How would _your_ wife like to know that you'd been shot down like a criminal? What would Helen say to her friends and my friends and her relatives and all the people we know?" That was just the reaction he'd been waiting for. "I mentioned that only as a suggestion. That could be easily arranged another way. Let's say, for example, that you've been working for the Government ever since your legal discharge, in an undercover assignment, and you died in line of duty. It should be quite easy to see that your widow was awarded some sort of posthumous decoration. Would that help?" I never thought that I would ever sit quietly and listen to someone calmly plot the complete obliteration of my whole life, my whole being. It was like one of these European novels when one sane man tries to live and find another sane person in a world of madness. A posthumous decoration. A medal for one that is dead and rotting. A nightmare with no waking up. "And perhaps--oh, certainly!--a pension. You can rest assured your wife will never want. You see, Mr. Miller, we want to test you, and your ... ability. Perhaps this unbelievable control you have can be duplicated, or understood. That we want to find out. We want to turn inside out all the enormous potential you have. In short we want--we must--have you in strictest custody and under rigid observation. If you like, I can see that you have a military or naval commission of rank commensurate with your importance. And don't think, Mr. Miller, that you're any less important than I've stated. Right now, from this side of the fence, it looks to me that you're the most important thing this side of the invention of the wheel."