The Big Eye (27 page)

 

 

Now the faces on the sidewalk looked different.

 

 

They looked almost happy, in a taut kind of way. They seemed to say,
"Sure, the Big Eye is looking down at me, but it's watching you, buddy,
and you, lady, and you and you, and everyone else in this crowd. We're
all in the same boat."

 

 

David found that he was more relaxed himself, just being here. The tension
of the thing in the sky was loosened a little. Palomar was lonely compared
to this, and the Big Eye, when its gaze was full, had a trick of picking
out its personal target more readily. It was more intimate because you
were few in number.

 

 

Here, although it was still personal, you could in some measure share the
impact with thousands of other people. You could, like cattle huddling
together flank to flank under a thunderstorm, find a certain amount of
comfort in the nearness of others.

 

 

However, David told himself, it was still daylight, and perhaps he had
only the illusion of comfort, a temporary feeling of security, here in
the bright sunlight.

 

 

But the night was coming, and then the Big Eye would hang in the sky,
low and leering.

 

 

Then David heard Joe Morgan's awed voice.

 

 

"I never saw anything like this. The mobs j amming up this sidewalk.
Where do they all come from?"

 

 

"From everywhere, mister," answered the man at the wheel. "From jerk
towns, from the farms, from all over. This town is jammed to the ceiling.
You're lucky if you can find a place to sleep. They're sleeping out in
the parks, anywhere, no matter where it is. Every train, every plane,
and every bus coming in are unloading 'em. I was reading in the paper
they got ten million people right here in Manhattan right now, let alone
the other boroughs."

 

 

"Back a year ago November, this town looked like a morgue," said David.

 

 

"Yeah. Now look at it!" Frank Leone shook his head. "It's murder just
to drive a hack five blocks."

 

 

"Why are they all coming to New York?" asked Morgan.

 

 

"New York, Chicago, Detroit, it's all the same. People feel better when
they're in crowds. The big cities are getting the play. They're all
looking to escape, looking for entertainment, for a good time before
they die, booze, shows, women. If you got nothing to do tonight, take a
walk down Broadway and around Times Square. You'll see something there,
mister."

 

 

As they turned off Lexington and moved west on Forty-ninth toward Park
Avenue, Joe Morgan got back to the subject of the crowds.

 

 

"Seems to be a lot of foreigners on the streets," he remarked.
"Asiatics and Europeans alike."

 

 

"Yeah," said Frank Leone. "Only nobody calls 'em foreigners any more.
Last summer, when they opened up this here world government over on
East River Drive, they let down all the bars of immigration. So they
all started to come in -- Chinese, Japs, Dutchmen, Russians, everybody.
Guess they all figured the U.S. was dreamland, and they wanted to see
it before the Big Eye got 'em." The driver grinned. "The first few days
it felt kind of funny -- like this wasn't the U.S.A. any more."

 

 

"And after that?" asked David.

 

 

"I dunno," answered Leone. "It was funny, how you got used to it.
Nobody gave a damn where anybody came from any more, I guess. Same way
in Russia. Me and the wife took a trip over there in September. Blew
all our insurance policies in on it."

 

 

"How'd you like the Soviet?" asked Morgan.

 

 

"It stinks. It's all right to visit, but not to live in. Give me New York
any time. But the people are all right, once you get to know 'em.
And they don't call it the Soviet any. more. Communism is a dead turkey
over there. They tore off all the signs and painted over the walls,
like they did here. But getting back to the U.S., it's funny how things
change. Take the taxi business now."

 

 

"Yes?" asked David. "What about it?"

 

 

"We got a lot of guys driving hacks that used to be in the Red Army.
The doughnut-and-coffee joints near the big hack stands are full of
'em. They drive like they're crazy, and I guess they are. When the
big Irish cops around here argue with 'em, they go crazy." He grinned
back at David and Morgan through the reflector. "Funny how times have
changed. Before the Big Eye came I would have murdered any one of these
Ivans if I could have got close enough. Now -- some of my best friends
are Russians."

 

 

"Look out, driver!" David yelled suddenly.

 

 

Frank Leone jammed on his brakes. The cab came within a foot of hitting
three children crossing against the light at Park. The youngsters, their
faces white and frightened, scurried for safety to the opposite sidewalk.

 

 

"Those goddamn kids," sweated Leone. "There ought to be a law to keep
'em off the downtown streets. Ten times a day I almost run 'em down."

 

 

"Where do all these kids come from?" asked Morgan. "School out or
something?"

 

 

"Ain't you heard?" said the driver. "Every school in town closed the
week after they found the Big Eye."

 

 

"No schools open?" David was surprised.

 

 

"Not a one."

 

 

"Seems funny," remarked Morgan. "I don't get it."

 

 

"Don't you?" The driver began to explain patiently: "Look. Take me,
Frank Leone. I got five kids. In the old days, before that damned Big
Eye came along, I worked nights, slept days. My kids got on my nerves
when they came home from school; sometimes I used to swear at them. Now
it's different. Now I can't see enough of 'em. A guy likes to get as
much as he can out of his family at a time like this, wants to keep his
kids home where he can be with 'em all the time."

 

 

As they turned on Madison from Forty-ninth, David thought of Carol,
heavy with child, back at Palomar.

 

 

And he noted, as they turned, that a long line of people stood on
Forty-ninth toward Fifth, waiting patiently to get into St. Patrick's
Cathedral.

 

 

The cab drew up in front of the New Weston.

 

 

"What good is education for kids now?" Frank Leone concluded. "There
ain't no future left for them to use it in."

 

 

They told Leone to wait. Then David and Morgan went into the lobby of
the hotel.

 

 

The place was crowded with people looking for accommodations. David was
grateful that Dr. Herrick had made reservations for them long in advance.

 

 

As the bellboy took their luggage Morgan asked where he could find the
nearest drugstore.

 

 

"What's the matter, Joe?" David said.

 

 

"I don't know. Feel a little under the weather, I guess. Maybe I'm a
little airsick or something. I never could take planes."

 

 

"Look," said David, "why don't you go upstairs and lie down awhile?
I'll talk to Herrick alone and go over the routine for tomorrow morning."

 

 

"You're sure you don't mind?"

 

 

David shook his head. "No use in both of us going over to the
Planetarium. I'll see you here at the hotel in a couple of hours,"

 

 

At the Hayden Planetarium, David spent two hours with Dr. Herrick. They
planned to present an illustrated lecture, with David doing the talking
and Morgan showing the plates.

 

 

Finally, when David rose to go, the director said:

 

 

"David, you can't be very busy at Palomar now, under the circumstances."

 

 

"No. Planet
Y
has made observation pretty difficult. Too much
interference from its light. We'll probably close for good in a few
months."

 

 

As Dr. Herrick escorted David out of the office he said:

 

 

"David, I wouldn't want to take you away from Dr. Dawson. But there's a
position open to you on the staff here at the Planetarium any time you
want it. Of course it'll be routine and unspectacular, but we expect
to stay open here" -- Dr. Herrick hesitated -- "until a month or two before
Christmas."

 

 

David thanked him and left.

 

 

When he got back to his room at the hotel Joe Morgan was just coming
out of the shower and whistling.

 

 

"Feel much better now, Dave. An hour's nap did it. By the way, what are
you doing tonight?"

 

 

David shrugged. "Nothing."

 

 

"Look, Dave." Joe seemed a little apologetic. "I made a phone call.
There's a girl I used to know here in New York. I had some ideas about
her at one time, but they never came true. But when I talked to her
on the phone she sounded a lot different. I think the planet's changed
her, and I'm going to find out." He hesitated. "I can make it for two.
Like to come along?"

 

 

David shook his head. "Thanks just the same, Joe."

 

 

"Okay." Morgan shrugged. "I don't want to corrupt you, or anything like
that, and you know how much I think of your wife. But with Carol the
way she is, and with just a few months leit, I thought you'd -- "

 

 

"Sure, Joe," said David. "But right now I'm not in the mood. You go
ahead. I'll just go out and wander around town."

 

 

It was seven o'clock when David left the hotel.

 

 

As he walked west down Fiftieth toward Broadway, he saw the Big Eye.

 

 

It had taken up its post just as dusk had come, and now it hung directly
over the huge RCA sign atop the Rockefeller Plaza skyscraper.

 

 

It was a little bilious now, its color washed and diluted by the great
glare of light thrown up from the amusement district beyond.

 

 

It followed David as he walked; it stared at him with a fixed and intent
look, until mercifully the intervening buildings hid it.

 

 

A wind was blowing, a sharp, raw, and incessant wind, and it moaned
and wailed through the windowless rectangles in the Rocke -- « feller
Center group.

 

 

But if the upper floors of the buildings were dead, the streets swarmed
with life.

 

 

David had barely crossed Fifth Avenue when he ran into the crowds.

 

 

They were lined along the sidewalks, waiting to get into the theaters.

 

 

The small theater at the Plaza, once a newsreel house, had changed. Now
it sported a giant marquee, and although the original sign still spelled
"Newsreel Theater," the legend in lights on the blazing marquee told a
different story:

 

HOUSE OF LAUGHS ONE SOLID HOUR OF LAUGHS THREE CARTOONS,
TWO FUNNY SHORT SUBJECTS

 

The signs on the outside lobby indicated the theater ran a continuous
performance, twenty-four hours a day. They offered the, balm that was
box office:

 

FORGET THE BIG EYE FOR AN HOUR COME IN AND LAUGH

 

The crowd blocked the sidewalk; it lined up snakelike in a continuous
line to the Radio City Music Hall just down the block; it spilled over
into the street and on the other side of the street, where it was kept
in check by ushers and police.

 

 

The faces of the people looked chalk-white in the garish light; they
chattered incessantly, their voices high-pitched and shrill; they
complained bitterly about having to wait so long.

 

 

The strange part of it was that David heard no one laugh.

 

 

Between Sixth and Seventh, just short of Broadway itself, he noticed a
new and unfamiliar group of establishments.

 

 

On the second and third stories of the cheap hotels there were neoii
signs just above discreetly curtained windows.

 

 

They bore odd names like "The Careless Hour," "The Green Slipper,"
"The Mirror," "The Oasis," "Katie's," "Edna's."

 

 

And under each sign was a single and discreet word: "Hostesses."

 

 

David inched his way through the dense crowds until he came to Broadway.

 

 

Broadway was obscene in its incandescent brilliance.

 

 

Every marquee was blazing, every electric sign; the dense crowds moved in
a great bath of white light. On the corner of Forty-sixth Street a huge
spectacular showed an animated clown, laughing and dancing and jumping
up and down, advertising a current comedy at one of the big movie houses.

 

 

The clown laughed and chuckled; his roars came from his illmninated
belly and rolled over the street.

 

 

But only the clown laughed.

 

 

On the huge television screen, the same one where the old Camel cigarette
sign had once been located, a network comedian kept up a fire of running
gags, which instantaneously poured into the living rooms of ten million
homes, coast to coast.

 

 

But on Broadway the gags fell flat.

 

 

Nobody laughed.

 

 

Yet the marquees indicated that every show was a comedy, every comedy
a hit. The producers had learned early that a serious drama, no matter
how artistic, would run no longer than a night.

 

 

The legitimate theaters were offering performances around the clock
instead of just matinee and evening. They accomplished this by the use
of rotating stock companies. When one company finished on the stage,
there was an hour intermission, and then another company took over.