Eye in the Sky (1957) (16 page)

What Laws said appeared to be so.
How long, once He had got the stage, did He customarily hold forth?

Ten minutes later Mrs. Pritchet had
had all she could stand. With an exasperated moan, she climbed to her
feet and made her way to the back of the room
where the
others stood.

“Good
heavens,” she complained, “I never could abide
those ranting
evangelists. It doesn’t seem to me I’ve
heard
one so noisy in all my life.”

“He’ll give up,” Hamilton
said, amused. “He’s getting
winded.”

“Everybody in this whole
hospital is watching,” Mrs. Pritchet revealed, her face clouding into a
displeased pout. “It’s not good for David … I’ve tried to bring him up
to see the world rationally. This isn’t a good place for him.”

“No,” Hamilton agreed,
“it certainly isn’t.”

“I want my son to be well
educated,” she confided gushily, her ornate hat dancing and swaying.
“I want
him to know the great classics,
to experience the beauties
of life. His father was Alfred B. Pritchet;
he did that wonderful rhymed translation of the
Iliad.
I think great art
should play a part in the ordinary man’s life, don’t you? It can make his
existence so much richer and more
meaningful.”

Mrs. Pritchet was almost as much a
bore as (Tetra
grammaton).

Miss Joan Reiss, her back to the
screen, said, “I just don’t think I can stand another minute of it. That
awful old man sitting there lapping that rubbish up.” Her intense face
twitched spasmodically. “I’d like to pick up something—anything—and smash
it over his head.”

“Ma’am,”
Laws told her, “dat dare ol’ man, he fix you-
all up like you nevuh
been fix’ up, iffen you-all do dat”

Mrs. Pritchet listened to Laws’
dialect with vapid pleasure. “Regional accents ring so sweetly on the
ear,”
she told him fatuously.
“Where are you from, Mr. Laws?”

“Clinton, Ohio,” Laws
said, losing his accent. He shot her a look of wrath; this was one reaction he
hadn’t an
ticipated.

“Clinton, Ohio,” Mrs.
Pritchet repeated, retaining her bland delight. “I’ve passed through
there. Doesn’t Clinton have a very lovely opera company?”

As Hamilton turned back to his wife,
Mrs. Pritchet was listing her favorite operas. “There’s a woman who
wouldn’t notice if
no
world existed,” he said to Marsha.

He had spoken softly. But, at that
moment, the roaring sermon came to an end. The muddled swirl of temper faded
from the screen; in an instant the room
dropped
into silence. Hamilton was chagrined to hear his
last words blare out
noisily in the abrupt quiet.

Slowly, inexorably, Silvester’s aged
head swiveled on the broomstick neck. “I beg your pardon?” he said,
in
a quiet, frigid voice. “Did you have
something to say?”

“That’s right,” Hamilton
said; he couldn’t back out now. “I want to talk to you, Silvester. The
seven of us have a bone to pick. And you’re on the other end.

* * * *
*

In the corner, the television set
showed a group of
angels happily singing
close-harmony versions of popu
lar hymns. Faces vacant and empty, the
angels swayed languidly back and forth, generating a mildly jazzy touch to the
lugubrious cadences.

“We have a problem,”
Hamilton said, his eyes on the old man. Probably, Silvester had the power to
hurl the seven of them down into Hell. After all, this was his world; if
anybody had pull with (Tetragrammaton), it
was
certainly Arthur Silvester.

“What problem is that?”
Silvester asked. “Why aren’t the lot of you at prayer?”

Ignoring him, Hamilton continued,
“We’ve made a discovery about our accident. How are your injuries mending,
by the way?”

A
smirk of calm satisfaction covered the withered face.
“My
injuries,” Silvester informed him, “are gone. Faith is responsible,
not these meddling doctors. Faith and prayer will carry a man through any
trial.” He added, “What you refer to as an ‘accident’ was the method
by which Providence tested us. God’s way of discovering what kind of fiber
we’re made out of.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Pritchet
protested, smiling confidently. “I’m sure Providence wouldn’t subject
people to such an ordeal.”

The old man studied her
relentlessly. “The One True God,” he stated categorically, “is a
stern God. He deals out punishment and reward as He sees fit. It is our fate to
submit. Mankind was put here on this Earth to fulfill the Will of the Cosmic
Authority.”

“Of the eight of us,”
Hamilton said, “seven were knocked unconscious by the impact of the fall.
One of us remained conscious. That was you.”

Silvester nodded in complacent
agreement. “As I fell,” he explained, “I prayed to the One True
God to protect
me.”

“From what?” Miss Reiss
broke in. “His own ordeal?”

Waving her away, Hamilton continued:
“There was a lot of free energy running around the Bevatron. Normally, each
individual has a unique frame of reference. But because we all lost
consciousness while we were in the energy beam, and you didn’t—”

Silvester was not listening. He was
gazing intently past Hamilton, toward Bill Laws. A righteous indignation
glowed in his sunken cheeks. “Is that,” he said thinly, “a
person of color standing there?”

“That’s our guide,”
Hamilton said.

“Before we continue,”
Silvester said evenly, “I’ll have to ask the colored person to step
outside. This is the private quarters of a white man.”

What Hamilton said came from a level
beyond careful reasoning. He had no excuse for saying it; the words rose too
naturally and spontaneously to be defended.
“The
hell with you,” he said, and saw Silvester’s face turn
bleak as
stone. Well, it had happened. So he might as well do it right. “A white
man? If that Second Bab or whatever it’s called, that (Tetragrammaton) rubbish
you’ve invented, can sit back and listen to you say that,
He’s more of a worthless, broken-down travesty of
a god
than you are of a man. Which is saying a lot.”

Mrs.
Pritchet gasped. David Pritchet giggled. Stricken, Miss Reiss and Marsha
involuntarily backed away. Laws
stood rigid, his face pained and
sardonic. Off in the corner, McFeyffe dully nursed his distended jaw and seemed
barely to have heard.

Gradually, Arthur Silvester rose to
his feet. He was no longer a man; he was an avenging force that transcended
humanity. An agent of purification, he was defending his cultish deity, his
country, the white race, and his personal honor all at once. For an interval he
stood gathering his powers. A vibration shook through his
gaunt frame; and from deep inside his body came a
slow,
gummy, poisonous hate. “I believe,” he said, “that
you are a nigger lover.”

That’s so,” Hamilton agreed.
“And an atheist and a Red. Have you met my wife? A Russian spy. Have you
met my friend Bill Laws? Graduate student in advanced
physics; good enough to sit down at the dinner table with
any
man alive. Good enough to—”

On the television screen, the chorus
of mixed angels had ceased singing. The image wavered; dark waves of light
radiated menacingly, a growing anger of fluid motion. The speaker no longer
carried lachrymose music; now a dull rumble rattled the tubes and condensers.
The rumble grew to an ear-splitting thunder.

From the television screen emerged
four vast figures. They were angels. Big, brutish, masculine angels, with mean
looks in their eyes. Each must have weighed two hundred pounds. Wings flapping,
the four angels directed themselves toward Hamilton. His wrinkled face
smirking, Silvester stepped back to enjoy the spectacle of heavenly vengeance
striking down the blasphemer.

As the first angel descended to
deliver the Cosmic Judgment, Hamilton knocked it cold. Behind him, Bill Laws
swept up a table lamp. Leaping forward, he smashed the second angel over the
head; stunned, the angel struggled to get hold of the Negro.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Pritchet
wailed. “Somebody call the
police.”

It was hopeless. Off in the corner,
McFeyffe awoke from his stupor and made a futile pass at one of the angels. A
blast of clear energy lapped over him; very quietly, McFeyffe collapsed against
the wall and lay still. David Pritchet, yelling excitedly, grabbed up bottles
of medicine from the bedside table and lobbed them haphazardly at the angels.
Marsha and Miss Reiss fought wildly, both of them hanging onto one hulking,
dull-witted angel, dragging him down, lacking and scratching at him, pulling
his feathers out in handfuls.

More angels soared from the
television screen. Arthur Silvester watched with smug satisfaction as Bill Laws
disappeared under a mound of vengeful wings. Only Hamilton remained, and there
was little left of him. Coat torn, nose streaming blood, he was putting up a
determined, last-ditch fight. Another angel went down, kicked squarely in the
groin. But for every one put out of com
mission,
a whole flock sailed from the twenty-seven-inch
television screen and
rapidly gained full stature.

Retreating,
Hamilton backed toward Silvester. “If
there was any justice in this
stinky, run-down world of
yours—” he
gasped. Two angels leaped on him; blinded,
choking, he felt his legs
slide out from under him. With a cry, Marsha struggled to make her way over.
Wielding a gleaming hatpin, she stabbed one of the angels in the kidney; the
angel bellowed and let go of Hamilton. Snatching up a bottle of mineral water
from
the table, Hamilton swung it
despairingly. The bottle ex
ploded against the wall; shards of glass and
foaming water spouted everywhere.

Sputtering, Arthur Silvester backed
away. Miss Reiss collided with him; wary as a cat, she spun, gave him a violent
shove, and scrambled away. Silvester, an astonished expression on his face,
stumbled and fell. A corner of the bed rose to meet his brittle skull; there
was a sharp
crack
as the two hit. Groaning, Arthur Silvester sagged into
unconsciousness …

And the angels vanished.

The hubbub died. The television set
became silent. Nothing remained but eight damaged human beings, strewn in
various postures of injury and defense. Mc
Feyffe
was totally unconscious, and partly singed. Arthur Silvester lay inert, eyes
glazed, tongue extended, one arm
twitching reflexively. Bill Laws,
sitting up, groped to
pull himself to his feet. Terror-stricken, Mrs.
Pritchet peeped into the room from the doorway, her soft face bubbling with
dismay. David Pritchet stood winded, his
arms
still full of the apples and oranges he had been hurl
ing.

Laughing hysterically, Miss Reiss cried, “We got him.
We won. We
won!”

Dazed, Hamilton gathered together the trembling
form of his wife. Slim, panting, Marsha huddled against
him. “Darling,” she whispered, eyes bright with tears, “it’s all
right, isn’t it? It’s over.”

Against his face her soft brown hair billowed. Her skin,
smooth and warm, pressed against his
lips; her body was
frail, slender, the light,
lithe body he remembered. And the sacklike garments were gone. In a trim little
cotton blouse and skirt, Marsha hugged him in grateful, joyous
relief.

“Sure,”
Laws muttered, standing upright with effort.
One
closed eye was swelling ominously; his clothes were
in tatters.
“The old bastard is out. We knocked him cold—that did it. Now he’s no
better than the rest of us.
Now he’s
unconscious, too.”

“We won,” Miss Reiss was repeating, with compulsive
emphasis. “We escaped from his
conspiracy.”

* * * * *

Doctors
came racing from every part of the hospital. Most of the medical attention was
directed toward Arthur Silvester. Grimacing weakly, the old man managed to
clamber back into his chair before the television set.

Thank
you,” he muttered. “I’m fine, thanks. I must have had a dizzy
spell.”

McFeyffe,
who was starting to revive, pawed happily at his jaw and neck; his multiple
curses were gone. With a glad shout he ripped away the bandage and wadded
cloth. “Gone!” he yelled. “Thank God!”

“Don’t
thank God,” Hamilton reminded him drily. “Quit while you’re
ahead.”

“What
was going on up here?” a doctor demanded.

“A
little scuffle.” Ironically, Laws indicated the box of strewn chocolates
that had spilled from the bedside table. “Over who got the last
buttercream.”

“There’s
only one thing wrong,” Hamilton murmured, deep in preoccupied thought.
“It’s probably just a technical matter.”

“What’s
that?” Marsha asked, pressed tight against
him.

“Your dream. Aren’t we all lying in the Bevatron, more
or less unconscious? Aren’t we physically suspended in
time?”

“Gosh,”
Marsha said, sobered. “That’s so. But we’re
back—we’re safe!”

“Apparently.”
Hamilton could feel her heart bearing,
and,
more slowly, the rise and fall of her breathing. “And that’s what
counts.” She was warm, soft, and wonderfully
slim. “As long as
I have you put together the way you were …”

His voice
died away. In his arms, his wife was slim,
all
right.
Too
slim.