The Big Eye (31 page)

 

 

It was very near the end.

 

 

Carol stirred in David's arms.

 

 

"David."

 

 

"Yes?"

 

 

"It's time to go."

 

 

They had decided to go outside, out in the street, to die. They were
going out into the open, under the sky, where they could watch the Big
Eye. Already from their apartment they could hear the hum of a crowd
below, like the buzz of a great swarm of bees far away.

 

 

It was easier to die outside, where they could see their executioner.
Waiting for the end in the apartment was too much like dying alone. It
was easier out in the street among other people, thousands of others,
millions of others, packed close for warmth, for courage, for comfort,
for anonymity.

 

 

It had always been easier to die en masse than alone.

 

 

They were silent for a moment there in the bedroom. They heard Emily
whimper once in her nap, and then it was still again.

 

 

Still, except for the ticking of the clock on the dressing table.

 

 

And David thought: This is the last time, this is the last time I'll
hold my wife in my arms like this. Soon, the last kiss, the last warm
embrace, the last touch of her hand and the thrill of her skin, the
last sound of her voice, the last scent of her hair, the last long look
in her eyes. The last, the last of everything. This is how it is to
wait to die. A poignant, rending, unbearable awareness of the last in
everything, because it is the last. Funny, he thought, I have no fear.
Only regret. Regret for what I have now, and what I shall soon lose. I
haven't had enough of what I have. Yes, that's it. That's what I want
and can't have. More daylight. More life, more living. More Carol, more
Emily, not the last, the absolute, final last, but more, more, more. . . .

 

 

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock . . .

 

 

And Carol thought: In an hour it'll be over. And I'm not afraid, I'm not
afraid, I'm not afraid. As long as David is close to me, and the baby
is in my arms, I'm not afraid. I don't know. Maybe it's just because
I don't believe it. In an hour I'm going to die, and I don't believe
it. Maybe death is unbelievable, even to the dying. Something that
happens to everyone else but not to you. Funny, about the way it feels,
about going out to die. It's like leaving on a long trip. Yesterday I
cleaned and scrubbed the apartment from top to bottom. Crazy-clean for
the hereafter. Can't die with an untidy house. And this morning I made
the beds. Can't die with the beds unmade. And I washed the dishes. Can't
die with dirty dishes in the sink, even if there'll be no one around to
eat from the clean ones. And I drew the blinds and fluffed the cushions
in the living room and turned off the electric stove and defrosted the
refrigerator. Just as though I were going away on a long trip with David
and the baby and would return someday. Everything but pack the bags. But
we'll never be back, we'll never be back again. I won't be back, and David
won't be back, and the baby won't. The baby. Emily. I hope she sleeps in
my arms, that she's asleep when it comes, when the Big Eye comes, in an
hour. I wonder what she would have been like, what she would have grown
up to be? Would she have grown to be sweet, and generous, and lovely,
and beautiful? And the husband she'd never have, who would he have been,
and what? Rich and handsome and intelligent? And the children she might
have had, the grandchildren I might have had, David and I. What would
they have been like? I'll never know, we'll never know. Still, I'm lucky,
I'm lucky. I've had something out of life. Daughter, lover, wife, and
mother. But I want more, more, more. This is the last, the very last,
the last hour. And I want more, more, more. . . .

 

 

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock . . .

 

 

"It's time to go," she whispered to David. "It's time to go out there
with the others. David, David, David, it's time to go."

 

 

"All right, darling."

 

 

They kissed, and embraced, and wept. Then they rose and went into the
other room, where Emily was sleeping.

 

 

She was lying there, her face buried in her own curls, resting on her
elbows and her knees, her buttocks arched up, as she had lain in the
womb. The blankets were half off, and she clutched a doll in her two
tiny fists, and the huge bunny rabbit was at the foot of the crib.

 

 

For a long time the two of them stood by the crib, looking down,
watching their sleeping child by the reddish light of the Big Eye
filtering through the blinds.

 

 

And then David said: "Carol, let her stay here. Let her sleep."

 

 

"No, David." Carol's eyes were wet, and the tears were in her throat.
"No, David, no, no!"

 

 

"She'll never know," he whispered. "She'll be sleeping and she'll never
know. Maybe it'd be better for her that way."

 

 

"No, David, no. Not alone. Not like this. Not away from me. I'll hold
her close in my arms. She'll sleep. She'll go with us, David. All
together. You couldn't leave her here alone. You know you couldn't."

 

 

"No," he said. "I guess I couldn't. It was -- just that she looks so warm
and happy and wonderful now -- here -- in the crib." He spoke brokenly now.
"I -- you're right, Carol. If we walked out of the door without her I'd
have come back for her."

 

 

They watched her for a moment more. And the clock sounded loud in the
silence:

 

 

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock . . .
Hurry-hurry, hurry-hurry, hurry-hurry, hurry-hurry . . .

 

 

"Wake her up, David," whispered Carol. "Wake her up now."

 

 

He reached out his hand, touched the child's cheek. She whimpered and
then turned on her back and lifted her arms toward David. He snatched
her up and pressed her close, so that she was warm and sweet against him,
so that his tears stained her sleep-blushed cheek.

 

 

Carol dressed the baby warmly in a long-sleeved shirt, sweater, overalls,
and snow suit.

 

 

Finally they were ready. As they opened the door they heard the insistent
sound of the clock:

 

 

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock . . .

 

 

David hesitated on the threshold, stopped, and gave the baby to Carol.

 

 

Then he walked into the bedroom, and the clock stopped ticking.

 

 

After that he returned and closed the door behind him, and they went
down into the red afternoon.

 

 

It had stopped snowing, and now the Big Eye shone down bale-fully upon
the frozen city.

 

 

It was low and directly overhead, and it seemed to hang like a heavy
stone on an invisible thread, filling the winter sky.

 

 

It reddened the snow and the faces of the people as they turned upward,
and glared back at itself in the waters of the rivers and the sea and
in the darkened windows of the cold skyscrapers.

 

 

It had a gaunt and hungry look as it waited voraciously to spring upon
and devour its prey.

 

 

It was fifteen minutes to three and almost time.

 

 

There was no sound but the mournful, funereal ringing of the bells.

 

 

No vehicles moved, no horns blew, no trains roared in the paralyzed city.

 

 

There were the bells and the people, thousands upon thousands of them,
thronging the sidewalks, jamming the streets, choking the park in a
solid mass of silent and waiting humanity.

 

 

From the churches and temples, illuminated by the pale flicker of candles,
came the wail and lamentation of prayer.

 

 

Every face was turned upward toward the Big Eye, the faces of men,
women, and children, and the stamp of death was upon every one of them.
There was no fear, no hysteria, only silence and resignation.

 

 

The glow became redder, the Big Eye bigger, the bells louder.

 

 

And then it was three o'clock.

 

 

The people, with a single accord, dropped to their knees in the snow
and bowed their heads and prayed and waited.

 

 

The bells stopped ringing, and it was still.

 

 

A minute passed.

 

 

The Big Eye hung suspended in the sky and looked down, as though delaying
a little to savor the moment.

 

 

Five minutes passed -- and then ten -- and fifteen.

 

 

And still the Big Eye hung in the sky.

 

 

At last a great sigh spread through the kneeling crowd, a kind of
convulsive shudder. Heads that were bowed turned upward with a kind of
wild, unbelieving hope.

 

 

The people started to whisper, and the whisper spread and rustled through
the mob and went from one to the other, like a rippling electric shock.

 

 

Then someone shouted hysterically:

 

 

"Look at it! Look at the Big Eye!"

 

 

The shout traveled like wildfire; it was contagious, almost instantaneous;
it became a wild roar, a bedlam; it possessed the crowd and gripped them
and shook them, and a sea of faces turned up to look into the sky.

 

 

It seemed to them, and they swore to it afterward, that the Big Eye had
stopped leering, that it had for the moment smiled.

 

 

The people knew that it would not strike, that God had stayed His hand
and deflected the Big Eye and given them life again. And the people
cried and wept and shouted:

 

 

"A miracle! A miracle!"

 

 

It was Christmas, and they had been given a miracle.

 

 

They stayed on their knees and prayed.

 

 

An hour later the flash came from the Harvard Observatory, the official
clearing center for all astronomical data.

 

 

The planet. Planet
Y
, the Big Eye, was passing on into the eternity
of space, away from the earth. The astronomers professed bewilderment.
They could not account for it: the Big Eye had betrayed their calculations
and their charts. In time, perhaps, they might have a logical explanation
for this extraordinary phenomenon.

 

 

But the people knew that it was Christmas and that God had given them
a miracle.

 

 

They knew He had been pleased with what they had wrought in the last
two years, the new and better world they had made.

 

 

As the crowds began to dissolve and move homeward, as the bells rang in
deafening clamor, as the people laughed and shouted and prayed and wept
and embraced each other, amid the roar and clamor and the wild hysteria,
David Hughes heard the calm voice of Dr. Dawson on that night in the
Old Man's study, when he had first known about the Big Eye:

 

 

"I can only say this, try to console you with this, David. You must
have faith -- faith in a miracle -- another miracle -- a miracle of
redemption."

 

 

The world had been caught short by the miracle. It had not expected
any future and had not prepared for it. Only by the most drastic measures
and by strict rationing of food supplies was it able narrowly to avert
a global famine.

 

 

As the months passed into the year 1963 the Big Eye grew smaller and
smaller.

 

 

As it spun off into the void its circumference shrank, and the Eye itself
began to blur in its outline.

 

 

It no longer hovered directly overhead and followed people about, bowing
them down with its weight and paralyzing them with its baleful stare.

 

 

Yet people knew that it was still watching them, that it would be watching
them long after it had disappeared into the sky.

 

 

They had seen the miracle, and they knew that the Big Eye, wherever it
was or would be, would always be watching them.

 

 

And the effect of this knowledge upon them was profound.

 

 

There were pessimists who predicted a return to the old patterns, the
old folkways and mores, the old way of life. It was all over now, they
said; the predatory instincts of men would come to the surface again;
they would rebound from their idealistic stupor and be themselves again.

 

 

It was bound to come again, they said. The world government would
slowly disintegrate, and nations would build up the fences they had torn
down. There was profit to gain now, and power, and prestige. Men would
go back to the luxury of hating each other again, indulging in their
pet prejudices, reviving their favorite whipping boys again.

 

 

A Jew would become a dirty Jew again, and different-from-us; a Negro,
a lousy nigger again, and different-from-us; a capitalist, a fat,
blood-sucking son of a bitch again, and different-from-us; a Communist,
a goddamn atheistic Red, and different-from-us. There would be wops
and spicks and greaseballs and squareheads and Chinks, and all of them
different-from-us.

 

 

It had to happen that way, the pessimists said. The Big Eye was going
away, and now the sky was the limit again.

 

 

There'd be customs again, and passports, and tariffs and identification
cards, and classifications, race, color, creed. There'd be restricted
areas and selected clienteles, and they'd build new railroad tracks
where they had torn up the old ones, with a right side and a wrong
side. There'd be cliques and cartels and monopolies and black marketeers
and labor racketeers and profiteers all over again. The rich would get
richer and the poor poorer, as they did in the good old days.