Eye in the Sky (1957) (25 page)

Overhead
hung the crisp blue sky of afternoon. The
California
golden poppies sparkled in the autumn mois
ture. There lay the picnic spread, the jars and dishes and paper plates
and cups. To Hamilton’s right rose the cool

grove of evergreens. The Ford coupe, bright and shiny, glinted in a
friendly, metallic way from where he had parked it, not far off, at the end of
the meadow.

A sea gull
flapped through the haze gathered along the horizon. A Diesel truck rumbled
noisily along the highway, trailing clouds of black smoke. In the dry
shrubbery halfway down the slope, a ground
squirrel zig
zagged toward his crumbling dirt burrow.

On all
sides of Hamilton the others were stirring. They were seven in all: Bill Laws
was somewhere at San Jose, lamenting the loss of his soap factory. Through a
pain-wracked blur, Hamilton could make out the form of his wife; Marsha had
risen shakily to her knees and was gazing
blankly around her. Not far
off was the still-inert Edith Pritchet. Beyond were Arthur Silvester and David
Pritchet. At the edge of the picnic spread, Charley McFeyffe had begun to
feebly twitch.

Close by
Hamilton sat the trim, sparse figure of Joan Reiss. Methodically, the woman was
gathering together her purse and glasses; her face was almost expressionless as
she circumspectly patted at her tight bun of hair.

“Thank
heaven,” she repeated, climbing skillfully to her feet. “That’s
over.”

It was her
voice that had aroused him.

McFeyffe,
from where he lay, gazed
at her vacantly, his face blank with shock.
“Back,” he echoed, without
comprehension.

“We’re
back in the real world,” Miss Reiss said, in a matter-of-fact voice.
“Isn’t that wonderful?” To the large, unmoving shape stretched out in
the moist grass beside her, she said: “Get up, Mrs. Pritchet. You don’t
have any hold over us, now.” Bending over, she pinched the woman’s great
bloated arm. “Everything’s the way it used to be.”

“Thank
God,” Arthur Silvester muttered piteously, as he struggled to get up.
“Oh, God, that awful voice.”

“Is
it over?” Marsha breathed, her brown eyes misty with doubt and relief.
Shuddering, she tottered up and stood swaying. “That awful nightmare at
the end
…
I
only caught a glimpse of it—”

“What was it?” David Pritchet pleaded, trembling with
fright. “That place and that voice talking to us—”

“It’s
gone,” McFeyffe said weakly, with prayerful
avidity. “We’re safe.”

“I’ll
help you up, Mr. Hamilton,” Miss Reiss said, approaching him. Extending
her slender, bony hand, she
stood smiling
her pale, colorless smile. “How does it feel
to be back in the real
world?”

He could say nothing. He could only lie, petrified with
terror.

“Come now,” Miss Reiss said calmly. “You’re going to
have to get up sooner or later.” Pointing to the Ford,
she explained, “I want you to drive us back to Belmont. The
sooner everybody is back home safe and sound, the
hap
pier I’ll be.” Sharp faced without a trace of sentiment, she
added, “I want to see you all back the way you were, back where you
belong. I won’t be satisfied until
then.”

* * * * *

His driving, like everything else, was mechanical, rigid,
a thing done reflexively, without
volition. Ahead of them
the state highway
spread out, smooth and carefully tended, between the rolling gray hills. Now
and then other cars passed them; they were nearing Bayshore
Freeway.

“It
won’t be long,” Miss Reiss said with anticipation. “We’re almost back
to Belmont.”

“Listen,”
Hamilton said hoarsely. “Stop pretending;
stop playing this sadistic game.”

“What
game is that?” Miss Reiss inquired mildly. “I
don’t follow you, Mr. Hamilton.”

“We’re
not back in the real world. We’re in your
world,
your paranoiac, vicious—”

“But
I’ve
created
the real world for you,” Miss Reiss said simply.
“Don’t you see? Look around you. Haven’t I done a good job? It was all
planned out in advance, a long time ago. You’ll find everything as it should
be; I
haven’t overlooked anything.”

His hands
white as they gripped the steering wheel, Hamilton demanded, “You were
waiting? You knew it would come around to you after Mrs. Pritchet?”

“Of course.” Quietly, with controlled pride, Miss Reiss
explained, “You just haven’t used your head, Mr. Hamil
ton. Remember why Arthur Silvester had control first,
before any of the rest of us? Because he never
lost con
sciousness. And why did Edith Pritchet follow him?”

“She
was stirring,” Marsha said, stricken. “There, on the floor of the
Bevatron. I—we could see her, at night;
when
we dreamed.”

“You should have paid more attention to your dreams,
Mrs. Hamilton,” Miss Reiss
observed. “You could have
looked down the
line and seen who lay ahead. After
Mrs.
Pritchet, I was the closest to consciousness.”

“And
after you?” Hamilton demanded.

“It doesn’t matter what comes after me, Mr. Hamilton,
because I’m the last. You’re back … you’ve come to the
end of your trip. Here’s your little world; isn’t it
lovely? And it belongs to all of you. That’s why I created it—so you’d have
things as you wanted them. You’ll find
everything intact
…
I hope you’ll begin living as you
were before.”

“I
guess,” Marsha said presently, “we’ll have to. We
don’t have any other choice.”

“Why
don’t you let us go?” McFeyffe demanded fu
tilely.

“I
can’t let you go, Mr. McFeyffe,” Miss Reiss ans
wered. “I’d have to stop existing, to do that.”

“Not completely,” McFeyffe pointed out, in an eager,
fluttering voice. “You could let
us use something on you.
That chloroform—something
to knock you out. Some
thing to
—
”

“Mr. McFeyffe,” Miss Reiss interrupted calmly, “I’ve
worked very hard on this. I’ve been planning it for a long
time, since the accident at the Bevatron. Since I
first found out that my turn would come. Wouldn’t it be a shame to let
all this go to waste? We may never have a
nother chance … No, this is too valuable an oppor
tunity to miss. Much too valuable.”
After awhile, David Pritchet pointed and
said, “There’s
Belmont”

“It’ll
be nice to be back,” Edith Pritchet said, in a
wavering, uncertain voice. “It’s such a sweet little town.”
One by one, under Miss Reiss’ directions,
Hamilton let th
em off at their homes. The last were himself and Marsha.
The two of them sat in the parked
—
in
front of Miss Reiss’ apartment house as
Miss Reiss collected her things and climbed nimbly out onto the side
walk.

“You
go on home,” she told them helpfully. “A hot bath and then bed would
be the best thing in the world
for
you.”

“Thanks,” Marsha said, almost inaudibly.
“Try to relax and enjoy yourselves,” Miss Reiss
instructed. “And please, try to forget all the things that
have happened. They’re behind you, now. Try to
remem
ber that.”

“Yes,” Marsha repeated, mechanically responding to
the dry, dispassionate, school-teacher
tone. “We’ll re
member.”

As she
crossed the sidewalk toward the apartment house steps, Miss Reiss paused a
moment. Her long
corduroy coat pulled around
her, she was an unimpos
ing, not
particularly striking figure. With her armload of
purse, gloves, and a copy of the
New Yorker
she
had
picked up at a drugstore, she
might have been any mid
dle-class secretary returning home from a day at
the
office. The cold wind of evening
ruffled her sand-colored
hair.
Behind her horn-rimmed glasses, her eyes were
enlarged and distorted as she gazed perceptively at the
two people in the car.

“Maybe I’ll drop over and visit you in a few days,”
she said tentatively. “We might
have a quiet evening,
just
sitting and chatting.”

“That—would be fine,” Marsha managed.

“Good night,” Miss Reiss said, concluding the matter.
With a brisk nod, she turned and
tripped up the stairs,
unlocked
the massive front door, and disappeared into
the dim, carpeted lobby of her apartment building.

“Get us home,” Marsha said, in a low, jangling voice.
“Jack, get us home. Please, get
us home.”

He did, as quickly as possible. Bouncing the coup
e
up
into
their driveway, he yanked on the parking brake,
snapped off the motor, and-savagely kicked open the
door.

“Here we are,” he told her. Marsha sat beside him un
moving, her skin as pale and cold as
wax. Gently but
firmly,
he took hold of her and lifted her from the car;
picking her up in his arms he strode along the path, around the side of
the house and onto the front porch.

“Anyhow,” Marsha said shakily, “Ninny Numbcat will
be back. And sex, that’s back, too. Everything will be
back, won’t it? Won’t this be just as good?”

He said
nothing. Busily, he concentrated on getting the front door open.

“She
wants power over us,” Marsha went on. “But that’s all right, isn’t
it? We have our world; she did create the real world for us. It looks the same
to me; do
you see any difference? Jack, for
God’s sake,
say some
thing.”

With his
shoulder, he pushed the door aside and
shoved
on the living room light.

“We’re
home,” Marsha said, glancing timidly around as he set her unceremoniously
on her feet.

“Yes, we are.” He slammed the door behind them.

“It’s
our old place, isn’t it? Just like it used to be be
fore—this all started.” Starting to unbutton her coat,
Marsha
paced around their living room, examining the
drapes,
the books, the prints on the walls, the furnishings.
“It feels
good, doesn’t it? Such a relief
…
all the familiar things. Nobody dropping snakes on us, nobody abolishing
categories … isn’t it fine?”

“It’s sensational,” Hamilton said bitterly.

“Jack.” She came up quietly beside him, her coat over
her arm. “We can’t put anything over on her, can we?
It won’t be like Mrs. Pritchet; she’s too smart. She’s a long way ahead of
us.”

“A million years ahead of us,” he agreed. “She had all
this planned out. Thinking, meditating, plotting, schem
ing … waiting for her chance to get control of
us.” In his pocket was a hard, round cylinder; with a furious jerk he
yanked it out and hurled it across the room,
against
the wall. The empty bottle of chloroform
bounced against the rug, rolled
a short distance, and
came silently to rest,
unbroken.

“That
won’t do any good here,” he said. “We might
as well give up. This time we really are licked.”

From the
closet, Marsha got a hanger and began pulling her coat around it. “Bill
Laws is going to feel
bad.”

“He
ought to slaughter me.”

“No,” Marsha disagreed. “It isn’t your fault.”

“How can I look him in the face? How can I look any
of you in the face? You wanted to stay back in Edith
Pritchet’s world; I brought you here—I fell for
that psyc
hotic’s strategy.”

“Don’t
worry about it, Jack. It won’t do any good.”

“No,” he admitted. “It won’t do any good.”

“I’ll
fix us some hot coffee.” At the kitchen door,
Marsha turned wanly. “You want brandy in yours?”

“Sure. Swell”

With a
forced smile, Marsha disappeared into the kitchen. For an interval there was
silence.

Then her
screams began.

Hamilton
was on his feet in an instant; sprinting
down
the hall he emerged at the doorway of the kitchen.
At first he failed to
see it; Marsha, leaning against the
kitchen
table, partly blocked his view.

It was as
he moved forward to grab hold of her that he saw it. The scene imprinted itself
on his brain, and then cut off as he closed his eyes and dragged his wife away.
One hand over her mouth, he stood forcing back
her moaning screams, trying not to join with her, trying, with all his
will, to control his own emotions.