The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories (17 page)

“Let me back,” he called to his sister in panic. “Look what you did, you put me into something
wrong
.”You did it on purpose, he said to himself as he moved. He moved on and on, searching for her.

If I could reach out, he thought. Reach—upward. But he had nothing to reach with, no limbs of any sort. What am I now that I’m out again? he asked himself as he tried to reach up. What do they call those things up there that shine? Those lights in the sky… can I see them without having eyes? No, he thought; I can’t.

He moved on; raising himself now and then as high as possible and then sinking back, once more to crawl, to do the one thing possible for him in his born, outside life.

In the sky, Walt Dangerfield moved, in his satellite, although he sat resting with his head in his hands. The pain inside him had grown, changed, absorbed him until, as so many times before, he could imagine nothing else.

How long can I keep going? he asked himself. How long will I live?

There was no one to answer.

Edie Keller, with a delicious shiver of exultation, watched the angleworm crawling slowly across the ground and knew with certitude that her brother was in it.

For inside her, down in her stomach, the mentality of the worm now resided; she heard its monotonous voice. “Boom, boom, boom,” it went, in echo of its own nondescript biological processes.

“Get out of me, worm,” she giggled. What did the worm think about its new existence? Was it as dumbfounded as Bill probably was? I have to keep my eye on him, she realized, meaning the creature wriggling across the ground. For he might get lost. “Bill,” she said, bending over him, “you look funny. You’re all red and long; did you know that?” And then she thought, What I should have done was put him in the body of another human being. Why didn’t I do that? Then it would be like it ought to be; I would have a real brother, outside of me, who I could play with.

But on the other hand she would have a strange, new person inside her. And that did not sound like much fun.

Who would do? she asked herself. One of the kids at school? An adult? Mr. Barnes, my teacher, maybe. Or—

Hoppy Harrington. Who is afraid of Bill anyhow.

“Bill,” she said, kneeling down and picking up the angleworm; she held it in the palm of her hand. “Wait until you hear my plan.” She held the worm against her side, where the hard lump within lay. “Get back inside now. You don’t want to be a worm anyhow; it’s no fun.”

Her brother’s voice once more came to her. “You—I hate you, I’ll never forgive you. You put me in a blind thing with no legs or nothing! All I could do was drag myself around!”

“I know,” she said, rocking back and forth, cupping the now-useless worm in her hand still. “Listen, did you hear me? You want to do that, Bill, what I said? Shall I get near Hoppy Harrington? You’d have eyes and ears; you’d be a real outside person.”

“It scares me.”

“But I want to,” Edie said, rocking back and forth. “We’re going to, Bill; we’re going to give you eyes and ears—
now
.”

There was no answer from Bill; he had turned his thoughts away from her and her world, into the regions which only he could reach. Talking to those old crummy, sticky dead, Edie said to herself. Those empty poo-poo dead that never had any fun or nothing.

It won’t do you any good, Bill, she thought. Because I’ve decided.

Hurrying down the path in her robe and slippers, through the night darkness, Edie Keller groped her way toward Hoppy Harrington’s house.

“If you’re going to do it you have to hurry,” Bill cried, from deep within her. “He knows about us—they’re telling me, the dead are. They say we’re in danger. If we can get close enough to him I can do an imitation of someone dead that’ll scare him, because he’s afraid of dead people. That’s because to him the dead are like fathers, lots of fathers, and—”

“Be quiet,” Edie said. “Let me
think.
” In the darkness she had gotten mixed up. She could not find the path through the oak forest, now, and she halted, breathing deeply, trying to orient herself by the dull gleam of the partial moon overhead.

It’s to the left, she thought. Down a hill. I must not fall; he’d hear the noise, he can hear a long way, almost everything. Step by step she descended, holding her breath.

“I’ve got a good imitation ready,” Bill was mumbling; he would not be quiet. “When I get near him I switch with someone dead, and you won’t like that because it’s—sort of squishy, but it’s just for a few minutes and then they can talk to him direct, from inside you. Is that—”

“Shut up,” Edie said desperately. They were now above Hoppy’s house; she saw the lights below. “Please, Bill, please.”

“But I have to explain to you,” Bill went on. “When I—”

He stopped. Inside her there was nothing. She was empty.

“Bill,” she said.

He had gone.

Before her eyes, in the dull moonlight, something she had never seen before bobbed. It rose, jiggled, its long pale hair streaming behind it like a tail; it rose until it hung directly before her face. It had tiny, dead eyes and a gaping mouth, it was nothing but a little hard round head, like a baseball. From its mouth came a squeak, and then it fluttered upward once more, released. She watched it as it gained more and more height, rising above the trees in a swimming motion, ascending in the unfamiliar atmosphere which he had never known before.

“Bill,” she said, “Hoppy took you out of me. Hoppy put you outside.” And you are leaving, she realized; Hoppy is making you go. “Come back,” she said, but it didn’t matter because he could not live outside of her. She knew that. Doctor Stockstill had said that. He could not be born, and Hoppy had heard him and made him born, knowing that he would die.

You won’t get to do your imitation, she realized. I told you to be quiet and you wouldn’t. Straining, she saw—or thought she saw—the hard little object with the streamers of hair, high now above her… and then it disappeared, silently. She was alone.

Why go on now? It was over. She turned, walked back up the hillside, her head lowered, eyes shut, feeling her way. Back to her house, her bed. Inside she felt raw; she felt the tearing loose. If you only could have been quiet, she thought. He would not have heard you. I told you so.

Floating in the atmosphere, Bill Keller saw a little, heard a little, felt the trees and the animals alive and moving among them. He felt the pressure at work on him, lifting him up, but he remembered his imitation and he said it. His voice came out tiny in the cold air; then his ears picked it up and he exclaimed.

“We have been taught a terrible lesson for our folly,” he squeaked, and his voice echoed in his ears, delighting him.

The pressure on him let go; he bobbed up, swimming happily, and then he dove. Down and down he went and just before he touched the ground he went sideways until, guided by the living presence within, he hung suspended above Hoppy Harrington’s house.

“This is God’s way!” he shouted in his thin, tiny voice. “We can see by this awful example that it is time to call a halt to high-altitude nuclear testing. I want all of you to write letters to President Kennedy!” He did not know who President Kennedy was. A living person, perhaps. He looked around for him but he did not see him; he saw oak forests of animals, he saw a bird with noiseless wings that drifted, huge-beaked, eyes staring. Bill squeaked in fright as the noiseless, brown-feathered bird glided his way.

The bird made a dreadful sound, of greed and the desire to rend.

“All of you,” Bill cried, fleeing through the dark, chill air. “You must write letters in protest!”

The glittering eyes of the bird followed behind him as he and it glided above the trees, in the dim moonlight.

The owl reached him. And crunched him, in a single instant. Once more he was within. He could no longer see or hear; it had been for a short time and now it was over. The owl, hooting, flew on. Bill Keller said to the owl, “Can you hear me?”

Maybe it could; maybe not. It was only an owl; it did not have any sense, as Edie had. Can I live inside you? he asked it, hidden away in here where no one knows… you have your flights that you make, your passes. With him, in the owl, were the bodies of mice and a thing that stirred and scratched, big enough to keep on wanting to live.

Lower, he told the owl. He saw, by means of the owl, the oaks; he saw clearly, as if everything were full of light. Millions of individual objects lay immobile and then he spied one that crept—it was alive and the owl turned that way. The creeping thing, suspecting nothing, hearing no sound, wandered on, out into the open.

An instant later it had been swallowed. The owl flew on. Good, he thought. And, is there more? This goes on all night, again and again, and then there is bathing when it rains, and the long, deep sleeps. Are they the best part? They are.

He said, “Fergesson don’t allow his employees to drink; it’s against his religion, isn’t it?” And then he said, “Hoppy, what’s the light from? Is it God? You know, like in the Bible. I mean, is it true?” The owl hooted.

A thousand dead things within him yammered for attention. He listened, repeated, picked among them. “You dirty little freak,” he said. “Now you listen. Stay down here; we’re below street-level, the bomb won’t get us. People upstairs, they’re going to die. Down here you clear. Space. For them.” Frightened, the owl flapped; it rose higher, trying to evade him. But he continued, sorting and picking and listening on.

“Stay down here,” he repeated. Again the lights of Hoppy’s house came into view; the owl had circled, returned to it, unable to get away. He made it stay where he wanted it. He brought it closer and closer in its passes to Hoppy. “You moronic jackass,” he said. “Stay where you are.”

The owl, with a furious effort, performed its regular technique; it coughed him up and he plummeted to the ground, trying to catch the currents of air. He crashed among humus and plant-growth; he rolled, giving little squeaks until finally he came to rest in a hollow.

Released, the owl soared off and disappeared.

“Let man’s compassion be witness to this,” he said as he lay in the hollow; he spoke in the minister’s voice from long ago, addressing the congregation of which Hoppy and his father had been a part. “It is ourselves who have done this; we see here only the results of mankind’s own folly.”

Lacking the owl eyes he saw only vaguely; the immaculate illumination seemed to be gone and all that remained were several nearby shapes. They were trees.

He saw, too, the form of Hoppy’s house outlined against the dim night sky.

It was not far off.

“Let me in,” Bill said, moving his mouth. He rolled about in the hollow; he thrashed until the leaves stirred. “I want to come in.”

An animal, hearing him, moved farther off, warily.

“In, in, in,” Bill said. “I can’t stay out here long; I’ll die. Edie, where are you?” He did not feel her nearby; he felt only the presence of the phocomelus within the house.

As best he could he rolled that way.

Early in the morning, Doctor Stockstill arrived at Hoppy Harrington’s house to make use of the transmitter in reaching the sick man in the sky, Walter Dangerfield. The transmitter, he noticed, was on, and so were lights here and there; puzzled, he knocked on the door.

The door opened and there sat Hoppy Harrington in the center of his phocomobile. Hoppy regarded him in an odd, cautious, defensive way.

“I want to make another try,” Stockstill said, knowing how hopeless it was but wanting to go ahead anyhow. “Is it okay?”

“Yes sir,” Hoppy said.

“Is Dangerfield still alive?”

“Yes sir. I’d know if he was dead.” Hoppy wheeled aside to admit him. “He must still be up there.”

“What’s happened?” Stockstill said. “Have you been up all night?”

“Yes,” Hoppy said. “Learning to work things.” He wheeled the phocomobile about. “It’s hard,” he said, apparently preoccupied. Now the ‘mobile bumped into the end of a table. “I hit that by mistake,” Hoppy said. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to.”

Stockstill said, “You seem different.”

“I’m Bill Keller,” the phocomelus said. “Not Hoppy Harrington.” With his right manual extensor he pointed. “There’s Hoppy; that’s him, from now on.”

In the corner lay a shriveled dough-like object several inches long; its mouth gaped in congealed emptiness. It had a human quality to it, and Stockstill went over to pick it up.

“That was me,” the phocomelus said. “But I got close enough last night to switch. He fought a lot, but he was afraid, so I won. I kept doing one imitation after another. The minister-one got him.”

Stockstill, holding the wizened little creature, said nothing.

“Do you know how to work the transmitter?” the phocomelus asked, presently. “Because I don’t. I tried but I can’t. I got the lights to work; they turn on and off. I practiced that all night.” To demonstrate, he rolled his ‘mobile to the wall, where with his manual extensor he snapped the light switch up and down.

After a time Stockstill said, looking down at the dead, tiny form he held in his hand, “I knew it wouldn’t survive.”

“It did for a while,” the phocomelus said. “For around an hour; that’s pretty good, isn’t it? Part of that time it was in an owl; I don’t know if that counts.”

“I—better get to work trying to contact Dangerfield,” Stockstill said finally. “He may die any time.”

“Yes,” the phocomelus said, nodding. “Want me to take that?” He held out an extensor and Stockstill handed him the homunculus. “That owl ate me,” the phoce said. “I didn’t like that, but it sure had good eyes; I liked that part, using its eyes.”

“Yes,” Stockstill said, reflexively. “Owls have tremendously good eyesight. That must have been quite an experience.” He seated himself at the transmitter. “What are you going to do now?” he asked.