Eye in the Sky (1957) (9 page)

“Stop
stalling,” Hamilton said. “You can put the first
question to
me. Three questions for each of us. Pertain
ing
to applied and theoretical electronics. Agreed?”

“Agreed,”
Brady responded reluctantly. The other tech
nicians crowded around
wide-eyed, fascinated by the turn of events. “I’m sorry for you, Hamilton.
Evidently you don’t comprehend what’s going on. I’d expect a layman to behave
in this irrational fashion, but a man at least partly disciplined in scientific—”

“Ask,”
Hamilton told him.

“State
Ohm’s Law,” Brady said.

Hamilton
blinked. It was like asking him to count from
one to ten; how could he
miss? “That’s your first ques
tion?”

“State Ohm’s Law,” Brady
repeated. Silently, his lips
began to move.

“What’s
happening?” Hamilton demanded suspiciously.
“Why are your lips
moving?”

“I’m praying,” Brady
revealed. “For Divine help.”

“Ohm’s
Law,” Hamilton said. “The resistance of a body to the passage of
electrical current—” He broke off.

“What’s
wrong?” Brady inquired.

“You’re distracting me.
Couldn’t you pray later?”

“Now,” Brady said
emphatically. “Later would be of
no
use.”

Trying to ignore the man’s twitching
lips, Hamilton
went on. “The resistance
of a body to the passage of elec
trical current can be stated by the
following equation: R equals …”

“Go
on,” Brady encouraged.

An odd, dead weight lay over
Hamilton’s mind. A series of symbols fluttered, figures and equations. Like
butterflies, words and phrases leaped and danced, and refused to be pinned
down. “An absolute unit of resist
ance,”
he said hoarsely, “can be defined as the resistance of a conductor in
which—”

“That doesn’t sound like Ohm’s
Law to me,” Brady said. Turning to his group, he asked, “Does that
sound
like Ohm’s Law to you?”

They
shook their heads piously.

“I’m licked,” Hamilton
said, incredulous. “I can’t even
state
Ohm’s Law.”

“Praise be to God,” Brady
answered.

The heathen has been struck
down,” a technician
noted
scientifically. “The contest is over.”

“This is unfair,” Hamilton
protested. “I know Ohm’s
Law as well
as I know my own name.”

“Face facts,” Brady told
him. “Admit you’re a heathen and outside tie Lord’s grace.”

“Don’t I get to ask you
something?”

Brady considered. “Sure. Go
ahead. Anything you
want”

“An
electron beam is deflected,” Hamilton said, “if it
passes between two plates through which a voltage
is applied. The electrons are subjected to a force at right
angles to their motion. Call the length of the
plates
l
₁
.
Call
the distance from the center of the plates to the
…”

He
broke off. Slightly above Brady, close to his right
ear, had appeared a mouth and hand. The mouth was
quietly whispering into Brady’s ear; directed by the
hand, the words vanished before Hamilton could
hear
them.

“Who’s
that?” he demanded, outraged.

“I
beg your pardon?” Brady said innocently, waving
away the mouth and
hand.

“Who’s
kibitzing? Who’s giving you information?”

“An
angel of the Lord,” Brady said. “Naturally.”

Hamilton gave up. “I quit. You
win.”

“Go on,” Brady encouraged.
“You were going to ask me to plot the deflection of the beam by this
formula.”
In a few succinct phrases,
he outlined the figures Hamil
ton had concocted in the privacy of his
mind. “Correct?”

“It’s not fair,” Hamilton
began. “Of all the flagrant,
blatant
cheating—”

The angelic mouth grinned coarsely
and then said something crude in Brady’s ear. Brady permitted himself a
momentary smile. “Very funny,” he acknowledged.
“Very apt, too.”

As
the great vulgar mouth began to fade away, Hamil
ton said, “Wait a
minute. Stick around. I want to talk
to
you.”

The mouth lingered. “What’s on
your mind?” it said, in a loud, rumbling, thunder-like mutter.

“You seem to know
already,” Hamilton answered.
“Didn’t
you just look?” The mouth twisted contemptuously.
“If you can
look into men’s minds,” Hamilton said, “you can also look into men’s
hearts.”

“What’s
this all about?” Brady demanded uncomfort
ably. “Go bother
your own angel.”

“There’s
a line somewhere,” Hamilton continued.
“Something about the
desire to commit a sin being as bad as actually committing it.”

“What
are you babbling about?” Brady demanded ir
ritably.

“As I construe that ancient
verse,” Hamilton said, “it’s a statement concerning the psychological
problem of motivation. It classes motive as the cardinal moral point, an
actually committed sin being merely the overt outgrowth of the evil desire.
Right and wrong depend not on what a man does but on what a man feels.”

The angelic mouth made an agreeing
motion. “What you say is true.”

“These
men,” Hamilton said, indicating the technicians,
“are
acting
as Champions of the One True God. They are rooting out heathenism. But in
their hearts lie evil motives. Back of their zealous actions lies a hard core
of
sinful desire.”

Brady gulped. “What do you
mean?”

“Your motive for screening me
out of EDA is venal.
You’re jealous of me.
And jealousy, as a motive, is un
acceptable. I call attention to this as
a coreligionist” Mildly, Hamilton added, “It’s my duty.”

“Jealousy,”
the angel repeated. “Yes, jealousy falls into
the category of sin. Except in the sense of the
Lord being a jealous God. In that usage, the term expresses the con
cept
that only One True God can exist. Worship of any other quasi-God is a denial of
His Nature, and a return
to
pre-Islamism.”

“But,”
Brady protested, “a Babiist can jealously pursue
the Lord’s
work.”

“Jealously in the sense that he
excludes all other work and loyalties,” the angel said. “There is
that one use of the term which does not involve negative moral characteristics.
One can speak of jealously defending one’s
heritage.
Meaning, in that case, a zealous determination to guard that which belongs to
one. This heathen, how
ever, asserts that you are jealous of him in the
sense that you wish to gainsay him his rightful position. You are
motivated by an envious, grudging, and malign
greed—
in essence, by a refusal to submit to the Cosmic Appor
tionment.”

“But—”
Brady said, flapping his arms foolishly.

“The heathen is right to point
out that apparent good works which are motivated by evil intentions are only
pseudo-good works. Your zealous acts are negated by your wicked covetousness.
Although your actions are directed toward sustaining the cause of the One True
God, your souls are impure and stained.”

“How do you define the term
impure,” Brady began,
but it was too
late. Judgment had been pronounced. Si
lently, the overhead sun dwindled
to a gloomy, sickly yellow and then faded out altogether. A dry, harsh wind
billowed around the group of frightened technicians. Underfoot, the ground
shriveled and became arid.

“You can make your appeals
later,” the angel said,
from the
gloomy darkness. He prepared to depart. “You’ll have plenty of time to
make use of the regular channels.”
What had been a fertile section
of the landscape sur
rounding the EDA
buildings was now a blighted square
of drought and barrenness. No plants
grew. The trees, the grass, had withered into dry husks. The technicians
dwindled until they became squat, hunched
figures, dark-skinned, hairy, with open sores on their filth-stained arms
and faces. Their eyes, red-rimmed, filled with tears as
they gazed about them in despair.

“Damned,” Brady croaked
brokenly. “We’re damned.”

The technicians were overtly and
visibly no longer saved. Now dwarfish, bent-over figures, they crept miserably
around, aimless and wretched. Night darkness filtered down on them through the
layers of drifting dust particles. Across the parched earth at their feet
slithered a snake. Soon after it came the first rasping click-click of a
scorpion… .

“Sorry,” Hamilton said
idly. “But truth will out” Brady glared up at him, red eyes gleaming
balefully
in his whisker-stubbled face.
Strands of filthy hair hung
over his
ears and neck. “You heathen,” he muttered, turning his back.

“Virtue is its own
reward,” Hamilton reminded him. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways.
Nothing succeeds
like success.”

Going
to his car, he climbed in and pushed the key into
the ignition lock.
Clouds of dust settled over the windshield as he began cranking the starter
motor. Nothing happened; the engine refused to catch. For a time he
continued pumping the accelerator and wondering
what
was wrong. Then, with dismay,
he noticed the faded seat
covers. The once brilliant and splendid
fabrics had become drab and indistinct. The car, unfortunately, had been
parked within the damned area.

Opening the glove compartment,
Hamilton got out his
well-thumbed auto
repair manual. But the thick booklet
no longer contained schemata of
automotive construction; it now listed common household prayers.

In
this milieu, prayer substituted for mechanical know-
how. Folding the book
open in front of him, he put the car into low gear, pressed down on the gas,
and released the clutch.

There is but one God,” he
began, “and the Second Bab is
—
”

The
engine caught, and the car moved noisily forward.
Backfiring and
groaning, it crept from the parking lot toward the street. Behind Hamilton the
damned tech
nicians wandered around in
their confined, blighted area.
Already, they had begun arguing the
proper course of appeal, citing dates and authorities. They’d have their status
back, Hamilton reflected. They’d manage.

It took four different common
household prayers to carry the car down the highway to Belmont. Once, as he
passed a garage, he considered stopping for
repairs. But
the sign made him hurry on.

Nicholton and Sons

Auto Healing

And
under it, a small window display of inspirational
literature, with the
leading slogan,
Every day in every way my car is getting newer and newer.

After the fifth prayer, the engine
seemed to be per
forming properly. And the
seat covers had regained their
usual luster. Some confidence returned to
him; he had gotten out of a nasty situation. Every world had its laws.
It was simply a question of discovering them.

Now evening had arrived everywhere.
Cars raced
along El Camino, their
headlights blazing. Behind him,
the lights of San Mateo winked in the
darkness. Overhead, ominous clouds covered the night sky. Driving with utmost
caution, he maneuvered his car from the
lanes
of commuter traffic over to the curb.

To
his left lay California Maintenance. But there was
no use approaching
the missile plant; even in his own world he hadn’t been acceptable. God knew
what it would be like now. Somehow, he intuited that it could only be worse.
Far worse. A man of Colonel T. E. Ed
wards’
type in this world would surpass belief.

To his right lay a small, familiar,
luminous oasis. He had loafed away many afternoons in the Safe Harbor …
directly across from the missile plant, the bar was the favorite spot of the
beer-drinking technicians on hot;
mid-summer
days.

Parking his car, Hamilton clambered
out and strode down the dark sidewalk. A light rain beat quietly down on him as
he headed gratefully for the flickering red
Golden Glow
neon sign.

* * * *
*

The bar was full of people and
friendly noise. Hamilton stood for a moment in the entrance, taking in the
presence of sullied humanity. This, at least, hadn’t
changed. The same black-jacketed truck drivers hunched o
ver
their beers at the far end of the counter. The same noisy young blond sat
perched on her stool: inevitable barfly drinking down her whiskey-colored
water. The gaudy jukebox roared furiously in the corner next to
the stove. To one side, two balding workmen were
in
tently playing shuffleboard.

Shouldering
his way among the people, Hamilton ap
proached the line of stools.
Seated directly in the center,
before the
great plate-glass mirror, waving his beer mug, s
houting and yelling at a group of momentary pals, was
a familiar figure.

A perverse gladness filled
Hamilton’s confused and
weary mind. “I
thought you were dead,” he said, punch
ing McFeyffe on the arm.
“You miserable bastard.”