Eye in the Sky (1957) (13 page)

He
was seeing the ancient, outmoded, geocentric uni
verse, with a giant,
unmoving Earth the only planet. Now he could make out Mars and Venus, bits of
ma
terial so tiny as to be virtually
nonexistent. And the stars.
They, too, were incredibly tiny
…
a canopy of insignificance. In an
instant, the entire fabric of his cosmology had come tottering down into
ludicrous ruin.

But it was only here.
This
was
the ancient Ptolemaic universe. Not his world. Tiny sun, tiny stars, the great
obese blob of an Earth, swollen and bloated,
occupying
dead center. That was true here—that was the way this
universe was run.

But that meant nothing concerning
his own universe … thank God.

Having
accepted this, he was not particularly surprised
to observe a deep
underlayer far below the grayness, a reddish film beneath the Earth. It looked
as if down at
the very bottom of this
universe, a primitive mining operation was going on. Forges, blast furnaces
and, further
into the distance, a kind of crude volcanic simmering
sent vague flashes of sinister red to color the
nondescript medium of gray.

It
was Hell.

And above him
…
he craned his neck. Now it was clearly
visible. Heaven. This was the other end of the’
phone system: this was the station to which the electron
ics men, the semanticists, the experts on
communication,
the psychologists, had linked Earth. This was point A on
the great cosmic wire.

Above the umbrella, the drifting
grayness faded out. For an interval there was nothing, not even the chill
night wind that had frozen his bones. McFeyffe,
clutch
ing the umbrella, watched in growing awe as the abode
of God grew closer. Not much of it was visible.
An in
finite wall of dense substance
stretched out, a protective
layer
that blocked off any real view.

Above the wall drifted a few
luminous specks. The specks darted and leaped like charged ions. As if they
were alive.

Probably,
they were angels. It was too soon to see.

The umbrella rose, and so did
Hamilton’s curiosity.
Amazingly, he was
quite calm. Under the circumstances
it was impossible to feel emotion;
either he was totally self-controlled or he was overwhelmed. It was one or
the other; there was no in-between. Soon, in
another five
minutes, he would be carried above the wall. He and
McFeyffe would be looking into Heaven.

A
long way, he thought. A long way from the moment
when they had stood in
the hall of the Bevatron building, facing each other. Arguing over some petty
trifle…

Gradually,
almost imperceptibly, the ascent of the
umbrella diminished. Now it was barely rising. This was
the
limit. Above this, there was no
up.
Idly, Hamilton
wondered what would happen. Would the umbrella be
gin to descend, as patiently as it had climbed? Or
would it collapse and deposit them in the middle of Heaven?

Something
was coming into view. They were parallel
with the expanse of protective material. An inane thought
crept into his mind: the material was there—not
to keep passersby from seeing in—but to keep inhabitants from
tumbling
out. To keep them from tumbling back down to the world from which over the
centuries, they had
come.

“We’re—”
McFeyffe wheezed. “We’re almost there.”

“Yeah,”
Hamilton said.

“This—has—quite
an effect on a—man’s outlook.”

“It really does,” he
admitted. Almost, he could see. Another second … half-second
…
a vague glimpse of landscape was
already coming into view. A confusing vision; some kind of circular continuum,
a sort of vaguely misty place. Was it a pond, an ocean? A vast
lake; swirling waters. Mountains at the far end;
an end
less range of forest
shrubbery.

Abruptly, the cosmic lake
disappeared, a curtain had
swept down over
it. But then the curtain, after an inter
val, swept back up. There was
the lake again, the un
limited expanse of
moist substance.

It was the biggest lake he had ever
seen. It was big
enough to contain the whole
world. As long as he lived, he didn’t expect to see a bigger lake. He wondered,
idly,
what the cubic capacity of it was. In the center was a denser,
more opaque substance. A land of lake within a lake. Was all Heaven just this
titanic lake? As far as he could see, there was nothing but lake.

It
wasn’t a lake. It was an
eye.
And the eye was look
ing at him and
McFeyffe!

He
didn’t have to be told Whose eye it was.

McFeyffe
screeched. His face turned black; his wind
rattled in his throat. A
breath of utter fright swept over him; for an instant he danced helplessly at
the end of
the umbrella, trying to force
his own fingers apart, try
ing
futilely to pry himself loose from the field of vision.
Trying, frantically and unsuccessfully, to
scramble away
from the eye.

The eye focused on the umbrella.
With an acrid
pop
the umbrella burst into flame. Instantly, the burning
fragments, the handle, and the two shrieking men
dropped like stones.

They did not descend as they had
come up. They
descended at meteoric
velocity. Neither of them was con
scious.
Once, Hamilton was dimly aware that the world
was not far below. Then
came a stunning impact; he
was tossed high
in the air again, almost all the way back
up. Almost, on this vast first bounce, back to Heaven.

But not quite. Again he was
descending. Again he
struck. After a time
of indescribable bouncing, his phys
ical self lay inert and gasping,
clutching at the surface of the Earth. Holding on desperately to a bunch of
withered grass growing in a soil of dry, red clay. Cau
tiously, painfully, he opened his eyes and looked around.

He was spread out on a long plain of
dusty, parched country. It was very early morning of another day, and
it was quite cold. Meager buildings rose in the
distance.
Not far off lay the
unmoving body of Charley McFeyffe.
Cheyenne,
Wyoming.

* * * * *

“I guess,” Hamilton
managed, after a long interval,
“this
is where I should have come first”

There was no answer from McFeyffe.
He was totally
unconscious. The only sound
was the shrill twittering of
birds
perched in a scraggly tree a few hundred yards off.

Painfully
pulling himself to his feet, Hamilton tottered
over and examined his companion. McFeyffe was alive
and with no
apparent injuries, but his breathing was
shallow
and harsh. A thin ooze of saliva had made a path
down his chin from his
half-open mouth. His face still
wore an
expression of terror and wonder, and overpower
ing dismay.

Why
dismay? Wasn’t McFeyffe glad of the sight of his
God?

More peculiar facts to file away.
More odd-ball data
in this odd-ball world.
Here he was at the spiritual cen
ter of the Babiist universe, Cheyenne,
Wyoming. God
had corrected the errant bent
in his direction. McFeyffe
had put him on the wrong track, but he was
surely and absolutely back. Tillingford had spoken the truth: it was to the
Prophet Horace Clamp that Providence in
tended
him to come.

With curiosity, he surveyed the
chill, gray outline of
the nearby town. In
the center, among the otherwise non
descript structures, rose one single
colossal spire. The
spire glowed furiously
in the early-morning sunlight. A
skyscraper?
A monument?

Not
at all. This was the temple of the One True Faith.
From this distance, several miles away, he was
seeing the
Sepulcher of the Second
Bab. The Babiist power, as ex
perienced
up to now, would seem a mere trifle compared
with what lay ahead.

“Get up,” he said to
McFeyffe, noticing him stir.

“Not
me,” McFeyffe answered. “You go on. I’m stay
ing here.”
He rested his head on his arm and closed his
eyes.

“I’ll wait.” While he
waited, Hamilton considered his situation. Here he was, set down in the middle
of Wy
oming, in the chill morning of an
autumn day, with only
thirty cents
in his pockets. But what had Tillingford said?
He shuddered. It was worth a try, though. And he didn’t
have much choice.

“Lord,”
he began, getting down in the customary pos
ture; one knee to the
ground, hands pressed together,
eyes turned
piously toward Heaven. “Reward Thy hum
ble servant according to the
usual pay scale for Class Four-A electronic workers. Tillingford mentioned four
hundred dollars.”

For a time nothing happened. A cold,
barren wind whipped over the plain of red clay, rustling the dry weeds and
rusty beer cans. Then, presently, the air
above
him stirred.

“Cover your head,”
Hamilton yelled at McFeyffe.

A shower of coins rained down, a
glittering swirl of dimes, nickels, quarters, and half dollars. With a sound
like coal pouring through a tin chute, the coins rattled
down, deafening and blinding him. When the torrent
had
tapered off, he began collecting. Sullen disappointment
was his next reaction, once the excitement had
worn off.
There was no four hundred dollars here; he was getting
pocket change tossed to a beggar.

It was what he deserved, though.

The amount, when he tallied it, came
to forty dollars and seventy-five cents. It would help; at least he’d be
able to keep himself eating. And when that was
gone—

“Don’t
forget,” McFeyffe muttered sickly, as he strug
gled to his feet.
“You owe me ten bucks.”

McFeyffe
was not a well man. His large face was mot
tled and unwholesome; his
thick flesh hung in ugly,
doughlike folds
around his collar. Nervously, his fingers plucked at a twitch in his cheek. The
transformation was
amazing; McFeyffe had been shattered by the sight of
his God. The face to face encounter had completely
demoralized him.

“Wasn’t He what you
expected?” Hamilton asked, as the two of them plodded dully toward the
highway.

Grunting,
McFeyffe spat red clay dust into a clump of
weeds. Hands thrust deep in
his pockets, he dragged himself along, eyes blank, slouched over like a broken
man.

“Of
course,” Hamilton conceded, “it’s none of my busi
ness.”

“I can use a drink,” was
all McFeyffe had to contribute. As they stepped up onto the shoulder of the
highway, he consulted his wallet. “I’ll see you in Belmont. Hand over the
ten bucks; I’ll need it for plane fare.”

Hamilton reluctantly counted out ten
dollars in small
change, which McFeyffe
accepted without comment.
They were entering the suburbs of Cheyenne
when
Hamilton noticed something foreboding
and ominous. On
the back of
McFeyffe’s neck, a series of ugly, swollen red
sores were forming. Fiery welts that grew and expanded
even as he watched.

“Boils,”
Hamilton observed, astonished.
McFeyffe
glanced at him in mute suffering. Presently
he
touched his left jaw. “And an abscessed wisdom tooth,” he added, in a
totally defeated tone. “Boils and an abscess. My punishment”

“For
what?”

Again, there was no answer. McFeyffe
was sunk into private gloom, battling with invisible comprehensions. He would
be lucky, Hamilton realized, if he survived his encounter with his God. Of
course, there was an
elaborate mechanism of
sin-expiation available; McFeyffe
could shed his abscessed tooth and
plague of boils with
the proper
absolutions. And McFeyffe, the innate oppor
tunist, would find the way.

At
the first bus stop they halted and threw themselves
wearily down on the
damp bench. Passers-by, on their journey into town for Saturday shopping,
glanced at
them curiously.

“Pilgrims,” Hamilton said
icily, in answer to an in
terested stare.
“Crawled on our knees from Battle Creek,
Michigan.”

This
time, there was no punishment from above. Sigh
ing, Hamilton almost
wished there had been; the capri
cious
personality element infuriated him. There was just too little relationship
between deed and punishment;
the
lightning was probably cutting down some totally in
nocent Cheyennite, on the far side of town.

“Here’s the bus,” McFeyffe
said gratefully, struggling to his feet. “Get out your dimes.”

When the bus reached the airfield,
McFeyffe tottered off and wretchedly made his way toward the office building.
Hamilton rode on, toward the towering, radiant, imposing structure that was
the Only True Sep
ulcher.