The Big Eye (22 page)

 

 

"Gentlemen, apparently you didn't hear the President speak on the air a
few minutes ago. He himself has pointed out that the threat of war is
over. As for myself, I am an astronomer, not a military man. Believe
me, I appreciate your concern for the national safety. But you have
mentioned the enemy and it is here I must ask you. General Hawthorne
and Mr. Secretary, a pertinent question."

 

 

The Secretary's eyes narrowed. "Well?"

 

 

"What do you think the men in the enemy armies will do, gentlemen,
when they hear of the coming catastrophe?"

 

 

The red slowly faded from Hawthorne's face. The Secretary, caught o -- £E
guard, stared at Dr. Dawson.

 

 

"As you implied, Mr. Secretary, the men in our armed forces are human and
will certainly react hy throwing down their arms and going home. But the
men in the Soviet armies are human, too, and they will do precisely the
same thing. As I see it, this planet is not only scheduled to shatter
the earth, but it will shatter some of the primitive notions we have
nurtured since history began. Among other things, it will certainly
vitiate the will to kill, to destroy each other."

 

 

The general and the Secretary listened, hypnotized, as the Old Man
continued:

 

 

"In short, gentlemen. Planet
Y
will automatically make a human
dream of many centuries come true. It will outlaw war. Men who are
threatened with a common disaster do not attack each other. After all,
what is there to fight about now? A future? There is no future. Territory?
Natural resources? Political systems? Ideology?" Dr. Dawson shrugged.
"These things are meaningless now."

 

 

The Old Man was magnificent, David marveled. He had his two visitors
riveted to the spot; they were unable to move, to say anything. David
noted that Hawthorne's mouth had sagged open ludicrously and that the
Cabinet oflScer's cigar had gone out.

 

 

Finally the Secretary of Defense stirred, fumbled for his hat, and
said quietly:

 

 

"You'll forgive us. Doctor, if we have to rush off now. The President
has instructed us to report back to him immediately." He hesitated and
then added hopefully, almost wistfully: "If we could only tell him that
there was some possibility, however remote, that this catastrophe may
not occur . . ."

 

 

The Old Man shook his head patiently. "I'm sorry, Mr. Secretary. But
I assure you, my colleagues and I have gone over our calculations,
checked and rechecked them numberless times. And there is no escape."

 

 

The two men walked slowly out of the study, into the hall of the
observatory itself, through the crowd of silent, white-faced onlookers
who had come to Palomar.

 

 

And David, as he watched General Hawthorne's retreating back, was
fascinated by the four stars on each shoulder. When the general had come
in the stars had been highly polished; they had glittered brightly in
the light.

 

 

Now, as he left, the stars seemed suddenly to have become a little dull,
as though they had tarnished during the general's brief stay in the room.

 

 

It was late afternoon.

 

 

Carol and David were still miles away from San Diego when they heard
the first faint tolling of the city's bells.

 

 

All along the road coming down, at Rincon, Valley Center, Escondido,
Rancho Santa Fe, Solana Beach, and Del Mar, they had heard the bells.

 

 

Listen to the bells, thought David, listen to the bells. Bells went with
wedding days. And this was his wedding day.

 

 

But these were funeral bells.

 

 

He had intended to postpone this wedding trip to Dago. They were going
crazy back at the observatory. There were a thousand things to do, and
he had volunteered to stay. But the Old Man would have none of it. He
had insisted that David and Carol go through with their plans. And now,
thought David, here he was with his bride beside him in the car, and they
were racing down the Highway to the Stars to a justice of the peace and
a wedding night in Dago. And tomorrow they would return to Palomar.

 

 

Listen to the bells. . . .

 

 

He was getting married this evening, and it was incongruous, almost
ridiculous, on this day of all days. It was just too damned normal to
be believable. Getting married was normal, if anything was. You said "I
do" and she said "I do" and you went somewhere and had your honeymoon,
and after that you settled down and planned for the future.

 

 

Or at least that was the way it had been in the old days.

 

 

But the old days were yesterday, and yesterday was another age, another
era. Yesterday was the day before the Year One. One, two. Christmas
Day, 1962.

 

 

Now you planned nothing, and there was no future.

 

 

Two years and a month. Twenty-five months. It was like walking through
twenty-five separate rooms, each smaller and narrower, each with less
ventilation and lower ceilings, each progressively colder and darker,
each pressing downward and inward, until the last room.

 

 

And from this there would be no other escape, no other room.

 

 

"David," said Carol. "Listen to the bells."

 

 

They sounded nearer now, clearer. They were a great chorus of
discordant calamity, wafted through the thin clear air by a hundred
bronze mouths. They clashed and clanged and rang; they cried and wailed
and sobbed. They welled up from the distant city and rippled across the
plain and echoed faintly through the mountain canyons.

 

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new.

 

 

It was just getting dark when they drove into San Diego.

 

 

It was a different kind of darkness from what they had ever known or seen
before. It was a darkness deafened and desecrated and made discordant
with the awful constant clamor of the tolling bells. It had the feel
and the texture and the weight of a great shroud.

 

 

It was a darkness of a special quality.

 

 

Every house in the city was ablaze with light, as though each held a
mourners' wake.

 

 

The rooftops were black with people staring up at the sky, staring at
something they could not see but knew was there. They seemed to be waiting
in a kind of feverish anticipation, as though half expecting that the
wildcat planet would somehow appear among the stars and plummet down
upon the earth ahead of schedule.

 

 

Those who were not on the rooftops swarmed into the streets, thousands
upon thousands of them, blocking traffic, moving aimlessly, mechanically,
going nowhere.

 

 

And they, too, stared up at the sky.

 

 

They were close-packed and dense, men, women, and children, like animals
huddled together for comfort and protection. They moved and swirled
and eddied in an endless crowd, craning their necks upward. They were
silent and sullen now, walking like automatons, shuMng along with slow
and dragging steps.

 

 

But it was there within them, the threat of explosion, of awful hysteria,
of terrible violence. It was ugly and alive in their white faces and
frightened eyes. It bubbled and seethed and brewed and waited.

 

 

The din was deafening. The bells rang, seemed to grow louder by
the hour. Horns honked as busses and cars moved by inches through the
seething crowd. Newsboys hawked extras shrilly, with screaming headlines:
END OF WORLD . . . PLANET HEADED FOR EARTH . . . DOOMSDAY, CHRISTMAS,
1962 . . . READ ALL ABOUT IT!

 

 

It was the only story in the newspapers; there was nothing else. There
were pictures of Dr. Dawson, of Palomar Observatory, of the great
telescope, a blown-up reproduction of the fatal spot of light.

 

 

The theater marquees blazed, the stores were brightly illuminated,
the neon signs in the bars and taverns blinked reddened invitation.

 

 

But they were empty and abandoned. The people were on the rooftops or
in the streets, out in the open, where they could look up and see the sky.

 

 

Only the churches were full. They were jammed to capacity, and the crowds
choked their doorways and spilled out into the streets and waited in
long lines. The wailing of prayer and the sound of lamentation came from
their interiors, mixing with the din of the bells.

 

 

Already there were a few who had begun to make their peace with God.

 

 

David and Carol hardly heard what the justice of the peace had said. He
mumbled the words in a kind of daze; his hands shook as he held the book.

 

 

He married them and signed the papers and took his fee. He was a man in
a trance, going through the motions from force of habit. The chances
were that he never really saw them, would never really remember them.
Nor would they remember him.

 

 

Now David edged the car through the crowds, honking his horn. The
people were no longer silent and sullen. Their nerves had been stretched
taut, tighter than they could stand, and now they had snapped back the
other way. They stopped looking at the sky and started looking at each
other. They became animated, articulate, shrill.

 

 

There was the smell of hysteria in the air.

 

 

The streets turned into bedlam. As David and Carol drove toward their
hotel they heard the crash of glass, the delighted yells of a great
crowd. Someone threw a stone through a shopwindow, and the idea caught
on. Soon they were breaking the windows of all the shops up and down
the streets, swarming into the stores, ripping the merchandise from
the shelves. Sirens sounded; the police fought the crowds. They surged
forward and retreated, surged and retreated. Their faces red, their eyes
wild and staring, they fought the police tooth and nail.

 

 

People who had never taken a drink, respectable people, middle-class
people, solid citizens and regular churchgoers, now crowded the bars
and taverns, or staggered in the streets, or lay in the gutters, dead
drunk. Horns blared in an earsplitting din, women were openly attacked,
the looting became general, shots were fired, cars tipped over, and
busses turned on their sides.

 

 

The planet ended restraint, turning it into release. The pressure was
gone, the emotional floodgates spewed wide open, and the people went
wild in a kind of ugly ecstasy. They could soar now; they were free and
untrammeled spirits; there was no future to face, only a future to forget.

 

 

Eat, drink, and be merry . . .

 

 

This was the first night of the Year One.

 

 

It was almost dawn now.

 

 

No one in the city had slept that night.

 

 

Carol and David, for the moment, lay quietly in each other's arms and
listened to the sounds of the macabre holiday outside. They were still
going on, the violent sounds, the honking of unrestrained horns, the
distant sirens, the tolling of far bells, the sound of running feet on
the pavement.

 

 

The hotel was a beehive; it was alive and awake. Its windows, from top to
bottom, were ablaze with light, as though it were the hour after sunset
instead of the hour before dawn. From them eddied anonymous voices,
shrill, high-pitched in drunken laughter, hysterical, babbling, tinged
with a kind of madness.

 

 

"To hell with it, Joe. Let it come outa the sky, this goddamn Planet
Y
.
I'll never see it -- wont even know it's there. I'll be stiffer than
a haddock for two years, Joe, see what I mean? Get myself so blind I
won't be able to see it. Yeah. That's the ticket. A two-year bender --
starting tonight. Have another drink, Joe!"

 

 

"Listen, Ann. You wanted that fur coat? Okay, you'll get it. That trip
around the world? Sure. We'll go. Anything you want, baby. We're on the
merry-go-round, honey. What've we got to lose? Sure, we'll take every
dime we've got out of the bank -- sell the business. Who cares about
money now? Who's saving for the future now? What future? We got two
years to have fun in, baby -- two years. Let's start now, baby. You know
what I mean. It's been a long time. Pull down the shades, baby. We're
wasting time."

 

 

"The funny part of it was, Phil, this insurance agent was up to see me
yesterday. Had me sold on a hundred thousand dollars' worth of life
insurance. I was going to sign the papers today. Kind of funny, isnt
it, when you think of it now? Who in hell would want any life insurance
now? For what? Pour me another one, Phil. Make it weak though. I feel
a little sick inside."

 

 

"Darling, listen, I'm calling from San Diego. I'll take the first plane I
can get for home. How are the kids? Yes, yes, I'll be home just as soon
as I can make it. I don't feel like being alone, either, at a time like
this. Please, please, Helen, dont cry. Don't cry like that. Try not to
think of it. Try to get some sleep now. Please, Helen, don't cry. Remember
what we've always said? If we had to go, we wanted to go together. . . ."

 

 

"Listen, Frank, it isn't just dying that's hard to take. Everybody's
got to die sooner or later. But it's knowing the exact date -- that's
what's hard, that's what's driving me out of my mind. Christmas Day,
1962, Christmas, 1962. That's all I can think of. Watching the calendar,
counting the hours. Frank, for Christ's sake, how are we going to stand
it, how are we going to stand it? And watching that Planet