Eye in the Sky (1957) (17 page)

“Marsha,” he said quietly, “something
has
gone
wrong.”

Instantly,
her lithe body stiffened. “Wrong? What do
you mean?”

“Take
off your clothes.” Urgently, he caught hold of
the zipper of her skirt. “Come on—hurry!”

Blinking,
Marsha edged away from him. “Here? But darling, with all these people—”

“Come
on!” he ordered sharply.

Bewildered,
Marsha began unfastening her blouse. Slipping out of it, she tossed it on the
bed and then bent to remove her skirt. Shocked and horrified, the group of
people watched as she stepped from her underclothing and stood naked in the
center of the room.

She was as
sexless as a bee.

“Look
at you,” Hamilton accused her savagely. “For
God’s sake, look! Can’t you
feel
it?”

Astonished, Marsha glanced down at herself. Her
breasts were totally gone. Her body was smooth, slightly
angular, without primary or secondary sex characteristics of any sort. Slim,
hairless, she might have been a young boy. But she wasn’t even that; she was
nothing. Absolutely and unequivocally neuter.

“What
…” she began, frightened. “I don’t under
stand.”

“We’re not back,” Hamilton said. “This isn’t our
world.”

“But
the angels,” Miss Reiss said. “They disappeared.”

Touching
his normal-sized jaw, McFeyffe protested,
“And
my abscessed tooth’s okay.”

“This
isn’t Silvester’s world, either,” Hamilton told him. “It’s somebody
else’s. Some third party’s. Good Lord—we’ll
never
get back.”
Agonized, he appealed to the stunned figures around him. “How many worlds
are there?
How many times is this going to happen?”

IX

strewn
across the floor of the Bevatron lay eight persons.
None of them was fully conscious. Around them lay littered
and smoking ruin, the charred metal struts and
concrete that had been the observation platform, the con
fused
tangle of material on which they had once stood.

Like
snails, medical workers crept cautiously down ladders into the chamber. It
would not be long before the eight bodies were reached, before the power of the
magnet had died and the humming stream of
protons had dimmed into silence.

Tossing
and turning in his bed, Hamilton studied the unceasing tableau. Again and again
he examined it; every aspect of the scene was scrutinized. As he moved
toward wakefulness, the scene dimmed. As he sank
rest
lessly back into sleep the scene reemerged, clear, sharp and
totally distinct.

Beside
Hamilton, his wife twisted and sighed in her
sleep.
In the town of Belmont, eight persons were tossing
and shifting, alternating between wakefulness and
sleep,
seeing again and again the
fixed outlines of the Bevatron, the sprawled, crumpled figures.

Struggling to learn every detail of the scene, Hamilton
contemplated each figure inch by inch.

First—and most compelling—was his own physical
body. It had landed last. Striking the cement with stunning
force, it lay sprawled sickeningly, arms extended, one leg crumpled under it.
Except for vague, shallow breathing, it made no movement God, if there were
only some way he could reach it
…
if he could shout at it, wake it up, bellow so loudly that it would rise out
of the darkness of unconsciousness. But it was
hopeless.

Not far
off lay the slumped hulk of McFeyffe. The man’s thick face bore an expression
of furious amazement; one hand was still extended to grab futilely at a
railing that no longer existed. A trickle of blood leaked down his fat cheek.
McFeyffe was injured; there was
no doubt of that. His breathing came
hoarsely, unevenly. Under his coat his chest rose and fell painfully.

Beyond McFeyffe lay Miss Joan Reiss.
Half buried in rubble, she lay panting for breath, arms and legs reflexively
struggling to push away the layer of plaster and concrete. Her glasses were
smashed. Her clothing was rumpled and torn, and an ugly welt was rising on her
temple.

His own wife, Marsha, was not far
off. At the fixed,
unmoving sight,
Hamilton’s heart convulsed with sorrow.
She, like the rest, could not be
aroused. Unconscious, she lay with one arm bent under her, knees drawn up in a
quasi-fetal posture, head turned on one side, singed brown hair spilled around
her neck and shoulders. A slow flutter of breath stirred her lips; beyond that
there was no motion. Her clothing was on fire; gradually, inexorably, a line of
dull sparks made its way toward her body. A cloud of acrid smoke hovered over
her, partially obscuring her slender legs and feet. One high-heeled shoe had
been torn completely off; it lay a yard or so away, forlorn and abandoned.

Mrs. Pritchet was a tubby mound of
pulsing flesh, grotesque in her gaudy flowered dress now terribly burned. Her
fantastic hat had been mashed to remnants by falling plaster. Her purse, torn
from her hands by the impact, was strewn open; its contents lay in confusion on
all sides of her.

Almost lost in the debris was David
Pritchet. Once the boy groaned. Once he stirred. A section of twisted metal lay
over his chest, preventing him from rising. It was toward him that the
snail-paced medical teams were
moving. What
the hell was the matter with them? Hamil
ton wanted to scream, to bellow
hysterically. Why didn’t they hurry? Four nights had passed …

But not there. In that world, the
real world, only a few terrible seconds had gone by.

Among heaps of tattered safety
screen lay the Negro guide, Bill Laws. His lank body twitched; eyes open and
glazed, he gazed sightlessly at a smoking heap of organic matter. The heap was
the thin, brittle body of Arthur Silvester. The old man had lost consciousness
… the pain and shock of his broken back had driven away the last spark of
personality. Of them all, he was the most injured.

There they lay, eight singed and
terribly crumpled bodies. A discouraging sight. But Hamilton, tossing and
turning in his comfortable bed, beside his slim
and lovely
wife, would have given anything on earth to find himself
back there. To return to the Bevatron and rouse his inanimate physical
counterpart … and thereby pry his mental self out of the wandering rut in which
it was
lost.

* * * * *

In all possible universes, Monday
was the same. At eight-thirty
a.m.,
Hamilton
was seated on the Southern
Pacific
commuters’ train, a San Francisco
Chronicle
spread out on his
lap, on his way up the coast to the Electronics Development Agency. Assuming,
of course, that it existed. As yet, he couldn’t tell.

Around him, listless white-collar
workers smoked and read the comics and discussed sports. Hunched over in his
seat, Hamilton moodily considered them. Did they know they were distorted
figments of somebody’s fantasy world? Apparently not. Placidly, they went
about their Monday routine, unaware that every aspect of their existence was
being manipulated by an invisible
presence.

It wasn’t hard to guess the identity
of that presence.

Probably, seven of the eight members
of the group had
figured it out by now. Even
his wife. At breakfast, Mar
sha had faced him solemnly and said,
“Mrs. Pritchet I thought about it all night. I’m
positive.”

“Why are you positive?” he
had asked acidly.

“Because,” Marsha
answered, with absolute conviction, “she’s the only one who would believe
this sort of
thing.” She ran her hands
over her flat body. “It’s exactly
the sort of silly, Victorian
nonsense she’d put over on
us.”

If there was any doubt in his mind,
it was resolved by a sight glimpsed as the train sped out of Belmont. Standing
obediently in front of a small rural shack was a horse attached to a cart full
of scrap iron: rusty sec
tions of abandoned
autos. The horse was wearing trous
ers.

“South
San Francisco,” the conductor brayed, appear
ing at the end of the swaying coach. Pocketing
his paper,
Hamilton joined the
meager crowd of businessmen
moving
toward the exit. A moment later he was striding gloomily toward the sparkling
white buildings that were the Electronics Development Agency. At least the com
pany
existed … that was a helpful start. Crossing his fingers, he prayed
fervently that his job was a part of
this
world.

Doctor Guy Tillingford met him in
his outer office.
“Bright and early, I
see,” he glowed, shaking hands. “Off
to a good start.”

Relaxing
considerably, Hamilton began removing his
coat. EDA existed, and he
still had a job. Tillingford,
in this
distorted realm, had hired him; that much carried
over. One major problem was erased from his note
pad of things to worry about.

“Darn
decent of you to let me have a day off,” Hamil
ton said warily, as
Tillingford led him down the hall to the labs. “I appreciated it.”

“How
did you make out?” Tillingford inquired.

That was a stopper. In Silvester’s
world, Tillingford had sent him to consult the Prophet of the Second Bab. The
chances were slight that this also carried over … in fact, it was out of
the question. Stalling, Hamilton said, “Not bad, considering. Of course,
it’s a little out
of my line.”

“Any
difficulty in finding the place?”

“None
at all.” Sweating, Hamilton wondered just what
he
had
done, in this world. “It was—”
he began. “It was
darn nice of
you. The first darn day, like that.”

“Think nothing of it. Just tell
me one thing.” At the lab doorway, Tillingford halted briefly. “Who
won?”

“W-won?”

“Did
your entry take the prize?” Grinning, Tillingford
slapped him
warmly on the back. “By golly, I’ll bet it did. I can tell by the expression
on your face.”

The portly Personnel Director came
striding along
the hall, a thick briefcase
under his arm. “How’d he do?”
he demanded, with a moist
chuckle. Knowingly, he tapped Hamilton on the arm. “Got a little something
to show us? A ribbon, maybe?”

“He’s
holding back,” Tillingford confided. “Ernie, let’s
give it a
write-up in the office bulletin; wouldn’t the
staff
be interested?”

“You’re
darn right,” the Personnel Director agreed. “I’ll
make a note
of that.” To Hamilton he said, “What did you tell us your cat’s name
is?”

“What?”
Hamilton faltered.

“Friday, when we were talking
about it. Darned if I can remember. I want to get the spelling right for the
office bulletin.”

In this universe, Hamilton had been
given a day off— his first working day at the new job—to enter Ninny Numbcat in
a pet show. Inwardly, he groaned. Mrs. Pritchet’s world, in some ways, was
going to be more of a trial than Arthur Silvester’s.

After collecting all details about
the pet show, the Personnel Director hurried off, leaving Hamilton and his boss
standing face to face. The moment had come; it couldn’t be put off.

“Doctor,” Hamilton said
grimly, taking the bit in his teeth, I have a confession to make. Friday, I was
so dam excited about going to work for you that I—” He grinned pleadingly.
“Well, frankly I don’t remember a darn thing we said. It’s all just a sort
of vague blur in my mind.”

“I understand, my boy,”
Tillingford said soothingly, giving him a paternal leer. “Don’t fret about
it
…
plenty of opportunity to go
over the details. I expect you’ll be here a good long time.”

“In fact,” Hamilton
plunged on, “I don’t even remember what my job is. Isn’t that a
laugh?”

They both had a good laugh over it.

“That’s certainly amusing, my
boy,” Tillingford agreed finally, wiping tears of merriment from his eyes.
“I thought I’d heard everything.”

“You suppose maybe—”
Hamilton tried to make his voice sound light and casual. “Just a short
briefer course, before you leave me off?”

“Well,” Tillingford said.
Some of his humor faded; he gained a solemn, important expression, a look of
serious thoughtfulness. A vacant, far-seeing glaze settled over his face; he
was contemplating the overall picture. “I don’t think it ever does any
harm to go over fundamentals. It’s important, I always say, to return to basic
postulates, now and then. So we don’t get steered too far
off our course.”

“Check,” Hamilton agreed,
praying silently that whatever it was, he would be able to adjust to it. What
in hell
was
Edith Pritchet’s conception of the function of a gigantic
electronics research combine?

“EDA,” Tillingford began,
“as you fully realize, is a major element in the national social
structure. It has a vital task to fulfill. And it is fulfilling that
task.”

“Absolutely,”
Hamilton echoed.

“What we here at EDA are doing
is more than a job. More, I dare say, than a mere economic venture. EDA was not
founded with the idea of making money.”