Eye in the Sky (1957) (31 page)

“Wait.”
Laws and McFeyffe appeared behind them,
panting for breath. “Tillingford has gone berserk,” Laws
gasped. “God, it’s a mess.”

“I
can’t believe it,” McFeyffe muttered, his thick face
shiny and contorted. “They’re down on all
fours. Matted
with filth and blood.
Fighting like animals.”

Ahead
of them, lights winked and glowed.

“What’s
that?” Laws demanded suspiciously. “We bet
ter keep off the main drag.”

It
was the business section of Belmont that lay spread
out. But not as they remembered it

“Well,”
Hamilton said acidly, “we should have expected it”

It was a sprawling slum that winked
and glowed in the night darkness. Seedy, slatternly shops rose up like
unwholesome mushrooms, ugly and blatant Bars, pool halls, bowling alleys,
houses of prostitution, gun shops … and over everything came a metallic
screech. The blaring din of American jazz, projected by speaker
horns mounted over tawdry pinball arcades. Neon
signs
flashed and winked. Armed soldiers
wandered aimlessly,
picking over the
stale choices in this crumbling expanse
of moral depravity.

In
a store window, Hamilton saw a strange sight. Rows
of knives and guns
displayed in plush cases.

“Why
not?” Laws said. The Communist idea of
America—gangster cities, full of vice and crime.”

“And the rural areas,”
Marsha said drably. “Indians,
wild
killings and lynchings. Bandits, massacres, blood
shed.”

“You
seem pretty well informed,” Laws observed.

Dejected, despairing, Marsha sank
down on the curb.
“I can’t go any
farther,” she informed them.

The three men stood awkwardly, not
knowing what
to do. “Come on,”
Hamilton told her roughly. “You’ll
freeze.”

Marsha
said nothing. Shivering, she hunched over,
face down, arms clasped together, body small and frail
against the cold.

“We
better get her inside,” Laws said. “Maybe one of
these restaurants.”

“There’s
no point in going on,” Marsha said to her
husband. “Is there?”

“I
suppose not,” he answered simply.

“You
don’t care if we get back.”

“Is
there anything I can say?”

Hamilton,
standing behind her, indicated the world
around them. “I can see it; that’s about all there is.”

“I’m
sorry,” McFeyffe said clumsily.

“If
s not your fault;” Hamilton answered.

“But
I feel responsible.”

“Forget
it” Bending down, Hamilton placed his hand
on his wife’s trembling shoulder. “Let’s go, honey. You
can’t stay here.”

“Even
if there’s no other place to go?”

“That’s right. Even if there’s
no other place to go.
Even if we’ve reached
the end of the world.”

“Which
you have,” Laws commented brutally.

Hamilton
had no answer. Crouching down, he pulled
his wife firmly to her feet. Listlessly, she permitted him
to drag her up. In the cold and darkness, she was
an
unimposing collection of matter
that followed obediently
after him.
“It seems like a long time ago,” Hamilton re
flected, holding onto her hand. “That day I
met you in
the lounge and told you
Colonel T. E. Edwards wanted
me.”

Marsha
nodded.

“The
day we visited the Bevatron.”

“Just think,” McFeyffe
said harshly, “if you hadn’t visited it, you wouldn’t have found
out.”

The
restaurants were too lavish, too ostentatious. Uni
formed servants bowed and scraped, rat-like
obsequious
men who scuttled about
among the ornate tables. Ham
ilton
and his group roamed aimlessly, with no particular
destination in mind.
The sidewalks were almost deserted; now and then a ragged shape pushed past
them,
a bent-over figure hunched against
the wind.

“A
yacht,” Laws said spiritlessly.

“What?”

“A yacht” Laws nodded
toward a block-long illum
inated display
window. “Lots of them. Want to buy one?”

In other windows, expensive furs and
jewelry were displayed. Perfumes, imported foods … and the eternal rococo
restaurants with their bowing servants and luxurious hangings. Occasional
clusters of ragged men and women stood gazing in, without the means to buy.
Once, moving glumly along the street, came a horse-drawn cart. In the back of
the cart, a dull-eyed family
sat clutching
its lump of belongings.

“Refugees,”
Laws conjectured. “From drought-starved
Kansas. From the Dust Bowl. Remember?”

Ahead of them stretched the vast
red-light district

“Well,” Hamilton said
presently, “what do you say?”

“What have we got to
lose?” Laws agreed. “We’ve gone as far as we can; there’s nothing
left”

“We might as well enjoy
ourselves,” McFeyffe mut
tered.
“While we still
can.
Before this unholy ruin breaks down
completely.”

Wordlessly, the four of them made
their way toward
the mass of
glaring
neon lights, beer signs, blaring horns
and
flapping, tattered awnings. Toward the old familiar
Safe Harbor.

* * * * *

Weary and grateful, Marsha sank down
at a table in the corner. “It feels good,” she commented. “Nice
and
warm.”

Hamilton stood absorbing the dim
friendliness of the room, the bedraggled comfortableness of the heaped
ashtrays, the collections of exhausted beer bottles, the
tinny jangle of the jukebox. Safe Harbor hadn’t
changed.
At the bar sat the usual
group of workmen, vacant-faced
shapes hunched moodily over their beers.
The wooden floor was littered with cigarette butts. The bartender, languidly
wiping the surface of the bar with his dirty rag, nodded to McFeyffe as the
three of them seated themselves around Marsha.

“Good
to get off my feet,” McFeyffe sighed.

“Everybody want beer?”
Laws asked. They signified their assent and he wandered off to the bar.

“We’ve come a long way,”
Marsha said wanly, slipping out of her coat “I don’t believe I’ve ever
been here
before.”

“Probably
not,” Hamilton agreed.

“Is this a place you come
to?”

“This
is where we all used to go for beer. When I was
working for Colonel Edwards.”

“Oh,” Marsha said. “I
remember, now. You used to mention it”

Carrying
four bottles of Golden Glow beer, Laws ap
peared and cautiously seated himself. “Help yourselves,”
he
told them.

“You
notice something?” Hamilton said, as he sipped
his beer. “Look
at the kids.”

Here and there in the dim recesses
of the bar were
teenagers. Fascinated, he watched
a young girl, certainly
no older than fourteen, make her way to the bar.
That was new; he didn’t recall that in the real world … it seemed a long
way behind them. And yet, this Communist fantasy wavered around him,
insubstantial and
hazy. The bar, the rows
of bottles and glasses, extended
into an indistinct blur. The drinking
youths, the tables,
the litter of beer
bottles, faded off into cloudy darkness; he couldn’t locate the rear of the
room. The familiar red
neon signs reading
Men
and
Women
were
not visible.

Squinting,
he shaded his eyes and peered. A long way
off, past the tables and
drinkers, was a nondescript streak of red light. Was that the signs?

“What does that read?” he
asked Laws, pointing.

Lips moving, Laws said, “It
looks like
Emergency Exit.”
After a moment he added, “It’s up
on the wall of the Bevatron. In case there’s a fire.”

“It
looks more like
Men
and
Women
to me,” McFeyffe
said.
“That’s what it always said, before.”

“Habit,” Hamilton told
him.

“Why
are those kids drinking?” Laws asked. “And tak
ing dope. Look
at them—they’ve got weed there, sure
as
hell.”

“Coca-cola, dope, liquor,
sex,” Hamilton said. “The moral depravity of the system. They
probably work in uranium mines.” He couldn’t erase the bitterness from his
voice. “And they’ll grow up to be gangsters and
carry sawed-off shotguns.”

“Chicago
gangsters,” Laws amplified.

“Then into the Army to
slaughter peasants and burn their huts. That’s the kind of system we have;
that’s the kind of country this is. Breeding ground for killers and
exploiters.” Turning to his wife, he said,
“Right, honey?
The kids taking dope, capitalists with blood on
their
hands, starving bums scavenging
through garbage cans—”

“Here comes a friend of
yours,” Marsha said quietly.

“Of
mine?” Surprised, Hamilton turned dubiously
around in his chair.

Hurrying through the shadows toward
them came a slim, willowy blonde, lips breathlessly apart, hair tum
bled over her shoulders. At first he didn’t
recognize her.
She wore a drawstring blouse, low-cut and rumpled.
Her face glowed with layers of make-up. Her tight
skirt
was slit almost to her thighs.
She had on no stockings and
her bare
feet were thrust into untidy, low-heeled loafers.
Her breasts were immense. As she came up to the
table,
a cloud of perfume and warmth drifted around him … a
complicated mixture of scents that brought back
equally complicated memories.

“Hello,”
Silky said, in a low, husky voice. Bending over
him, she briefly touched
her lips to his temple. “I was
waiting
for you.”

Rising,
Hamilton offered her a chair. “Sit down.”

“Thanks.” Seating herself,
Silky glanced around the
table.
“Hello, Mrs. Hamilton,” she said to Marsha. “Hello,
Charley.
Hello, Mr. Laws.”

“May I ask you one
question?” Marsha said curtly.

“Certainly.”

“What
size bra do you wear?”

Without self-consciousness, Silky
slipped down her
blouse until her
magnificent breasts were visible. “Does
that answer your question?” she asked. She wore no bra.

Blushing,
Marsha retreated. “Yes, thanks.”

Gazing with unabashed awe at the
girl’s distended, almost mystically up-raised bosom, Hamilton said, “I
guess the bra is a capitalist trick, designed to deceive
the masses.”

“Talk about masses,”
Marsha said halfheartedly, but the sight had robbed her of any real spirit.
“You must have trouble finding things you’ve dropped,” she said
to Silky.

“In
a Communist society,” Laws announced, “the pro
letariat never drops anything.”

Silky smiled absently. Touching her
breasts with her
long, tapering fingers,
she sat for a time, deep in thought.
Then, with a shrug, she lifted her
blouse around her,
smoothed down her
sleeves, and folded her hands on the
table.
“What’s new?”

“Big battle over our way,”
Hamilton said. “Blood
sucking vampire
of Wall Street versus heroic, clear-eyed,
joyfully-singing workmen.”

Silky eyed him uncertainly.
“Who seems to be win
ning?”

“Well,”
Hamilton conceded, “the lying fascist jackal-
pack is pretty much
buried in flaming slogans.”

“Look,”
Laws said suddenly, pointing. “See that over
there?”

In
the corner of the bar stood the cigarette dispensing
machine.

“Remember
that?” Laws asked Hamilton.
“I sure do.”

“And there’s the other
one.” Laws pointed to the
candy
dispensing machine, in the opposite corner of the
bar, almost lost in
the drifting shadows. “Remember what we did to that?”

“I remember. We had that thing
spouting top-quality
French brandy.”

“We were going to change
society,” Laws said. “We
were
going to alter the world. Think what we could have
done, Jack.”

“I’m
thinking.”

“We could have turned out
everything anybody ever
wanted. Food,
medicine, whiskey, comic books, plows,
contraceptives.
What a principle that was.”

“The Principle of Divine
Regurgitation. The Law of
Miraculous
Fission.” Hamilton nodded. “That would
have worked out fine in
this particular world.”

“We could have outdone the
Party,” Laws agreed. “They have to build the dams and heavy
industries. All
we needed was a U-no
bar.”

“And a length of neon
tubing,” Hamilton reminded him. “Yes, it would have been a lot of
fun.”