The Big Eye

by Max Ehrlich

  David glanced at the driver's face. It had that same taut, tense look, the same haunted look he had seen at the airport. He felt a little queasy. He knew that the same look had settled on his own face now, like a cold gray mask.

  You couldn't be here and not be afraid. Not now. . . .

  He tried hard to be casual. "Where are they going to find room for all these people?"

  The driver shrugged. "I don't know. You take the island here now, mister. It's jammed with extra people, all from the city. Must be half a million of 'em anyway. They're living in shacks, out in the open, anywhere. It's sure a hell of a situation. They declared martial law out here yesterday."

  "That bad, eh?"

  "Yeah. And worse in the city. They've got a couple of Army divisions in there now. Just to keep order. But as soon as everybody's out, I figure they'll move the soldiers out. As it is, they're sitting ducks right now." The driver shook his head. "You know about all the rumors flying around these days, the funny things happening that nobody can explain. You know who's behind it as well as I do, and what they're leading up to."

  Yes, thought David, I know. That's why I'm here now. And that's why I won't be here tomorrow morning. His fingers seemed to perspire damply on the leather of his brief case as he caught the eye of the driver in the reflector mirror.

  "If you knew what I knew, driver, you'd turn this big black limousine around and follow those other cars to wherever they were going, away from the city.

  The man at the wheel continued to talk. He was almost garrulous; he seemed grateful for someone to talk to. It was easy to guess that he had driven an empty car back to the main terminal time after time, that David's presence was a surprise.

  "You take those GIs now," he said sympathetically. "Those poor bastards up ahead in town. A lot of 'em couldn't take it -- went over the hill -- deserted. They shot a couple of 'em last night." He shook his head. "I don't blame 'em for cracking up. It's the waiting that drives you nuts. It's beginning to get me too."

  They continued down Van Wyck Expressway and into Queens Boulevard, racing by the slowly moving line of traffic on their left. David stared at the residential sections of Queens on each side of the main artery. They presented an eerie sight, a kind of macabre fantasy. They were like vast stone-and-wooden graveyards, dark and empty.

  But the houses were not really empty. The Fear was there, living in every one of them. The only sign of movement was on the highway itself, the solid line of cars crawling along, bumper to bumper, impatient of delay, heading east -- east and away.

  The limousine sped across the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, into the silent and dark and dying city, and swung over to East River Drive. David looked hard at the black buildings and towers etched against the moon-washed sky. The few illuminated windows he could see were isolated, far apart, conspicuous in their loneliness.

  And the Fear was the only tenant in these darkened office buildings too.

  And then, at last, they passed the great area between Forty-eighth and Forty-second streets -- the permanent headquarters of the United Nations.

  With a kind of morbid fascination, David watched it slip by. There it was, the great international city within a city, the terraces, the auxiliary buildings and apartments, and finally, the main UN skyscraper itself.

  The building towered there now, dark and empty and silent, a great massive mausoleum. It seemed to glower at them balefully as they went by. David fancied that the grass on the terraces now grew rank, and the hedges and foliage, once trim and clipped, would now be ragged and unkempt.

  It was a symbol of failure now, a great empty House of the Dead, a house of shattered hopes, of the blighted dreams of mankind.

  Back in 1946, when David had been a boy of sixteen, the delegates of the nations had first met on the site of the World's Fair and at Lake Success to bring about the salvation of humanity and the security of the world. There the giants of a decade and a half ago, Molotov, Byrnes, and Bevin, as well as the Greats and the near Greats of the other countries, had met to resolve what hitherto had been considered insoluble problems.

  They had begun with fine words, and noble phrases, and good intentions. But Byrnes and Molotov and Bevin had haggled and fought to begin with, and so had their successors, down through the years, here in this magnificent new setting on East River Drive. Marshall and Acheson, Stalin and Vishinsky, Truman, and now the President and his aides and advisers. They had all seen a vision in the beginning, but as time went on the vision had grown blurred and finally died, and at last it was gone. The cold war had grown colder with every passing day, and now it was ready to burst through the bottom of the thermometer.

  And finally, a month ago, they had closed the magnificent buildings. The delegates had broken, pointing fingers at each other in recrimination, accusing each other of greed, of imperialism, of stubbornness, of bad faith. And they had broken irrevocably, and for good. The representatives had melted away and gone home, and they had closed the buildings and bolted the doors, and taken down the flags of the nations which had once flown proudly in the great courtyard, and abandoned it.

  Now the UN stood there, a series of stone ghosts on East River Drive, seedy and unkempt, the symbol of a Great Failure.

  And it had been the Great Failure that had brought about the Great Fear.

  Now -- everyone had the bomb.

  Yes, thought David, they have it, and we have it. And where do we go from here? What now?

  The driver turned and saw David staring back at the buildings. "Yeah, look at the joint," he said. "Many's the time I hauled these striped-pants diplomats from Idlewild to the UN. Big shots from all over the world. And where are they now? Hiding in caves, maybe, I dunno. All I know is we've got millions of dollars' worth of real estate back there, but it's not worth a nickel now."

  "Maybe they'll open it again some day," suggested David hopefully. "Maybe they'll still be able to get together."

  "You mean that conference the Secretary of State's having over in Russia right now?"

  "Yes."

  "Nuts," the driver snorted. "Not a chance. It's too late. People have gone crazy. They're set on blowing themselves up, and nobody's going to stop them. It's like watching a car without brakes rolling down a hill toward a clifi. Everybody's standing around, hollering 'Stop,- stop,' but nobody's doing anything to stop it. The only question is, who's going to blow up who?" The beefy man lowered his voice. "And between you and me, mister, the Russians have already started it. They've already started to give us the business right now."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean. The stories that are going around. The Reds are supposed to have something extra, something that we haven't been able to figure out yet, and they're using it right now. Look at all the funny things that are happening all of a sudden. The earthquake in Dallas and another in Montreal. The way the television and radio has been blacking out all of a sudden."

  David was silent for a moment. "And you think the Russians are responsible?"

  "Who else?" The driver looked at him, a little incredulous. "Things like this don't happen all of a sudden, out of left field. The Reds have got something bigger, maybe better, than the bomb. That's what everybody is saying. What about that atom bomb that went off down in Texas? Blew three towns right off the map. You can't tell me that was any accident, mister. The Russians are jabbing at us now, trying to panic us and throw us off balance. And they'll be winding up for their Sunday punch any minute now."

  David listened, fascinated. This air-line driver didn't know it, but he was putting his finger on the reason why he, David Hughes, was in New York right now with a locked and bulging brief case.

  "And that ain't all, mister," said the man, leaning toward David confidentially. "I'll tell you something else, and it's straight from the horse's mouth. The Reds have found a way to stop our rockets and jets the minute they're airborne."

  David stared at him. "That's just rumor."

  "Yeah." The driver almost sn
arled at him. "Listen, mister. I'll let you in on a little secret. I drive this car for the air line. And naturally, once in a while, I drive pilots and some of the crews in to town. I've heard 'em talking in the back seat, and what they've said is enough to make a guy's hair stand on end."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that the instruments on the stratocruisers have been going haywire, crazy. The radar, too. Some of the boys have had to navigate as blind as a bat. You think those crashes you've been reading about just happened? Nuts! The Reds made 'em happen. They've got some kind of magnetic gimmick in the air, and they've been turning it on and off. What do you think's going to happen to our jets and rockets if we let 'em go? They're all operated by instruments, aren't they? If we let a few go and the Russians use this gimmick, our plane will land in Siberia instead of in Moscow. Hell, maybe the Reds can make 'em turn right around and come back!"

  David listened, stunned by what he heard. His face was impassive, but his mind was racing furiously. This air-line employee knew. He didn't realize how much he knew. David hadn't known it himself until early that evening. He had heard it from a source on a much higher level, and he would hear more about it tomorrow morning, at a meeting place he did not yet know.

  He shuddered to think of the reaction, the panic, that would sweep the country if the information volunteered by the garrulous driver suddenly became widespread and public knowledge.

  The man wheeled his limousine west, up Forty-second Street, and finally brought the car to a stop in front of the air-line terminal. And as he opened the door he growled:

  "Those goddamn fools back there. Those diplomats. They should have kept trying. They should have sat down on their striped pants and m,ade it work! The goddamn stupid fools!"

  David left the car and went into the terminal to check his return reservations. One look was enough to discourage him. What he saw was a repeat performance of the terminal at Idlewild. The same milling crowd, the same weary clerks, the same babel of frightened voices:

  "But I've got to get out! I've got to! You've got to get me a reservation, clerk!"

  "I've got Priority One. Right here. Doesn't that mean something?"

  "Try the trains? What trains? Look through the window, clerk. They've closed the gates across the street at Grand Central and shut down the ticket windows!"

  "Look, I've been down here two days, waiting for a cancellation. You can't tell me no cancellation has come through! One must have come through!"

  "Listen, clerk, I've got a wife and daughter. I've got to get them out, I've got to! I'll take three seats on any plane, going anywhere, as long as it's out of town!"

  Yes, thought David, I've seen it before, heard it before.

  The same voices, the same people with the same pale and frightened faces, surging forward toward the counters until they were checked and pushed back by grim, white-helmeted military police.

  This was where the Fear was the most paralyzing, its hand the clammiest, its clutch the tightest.

  This was the city.

  David hung onto his bag and brief case, elbowed his way through the crowd, and rode down the escalator. He pushed the glass doors open and stepped out into the dark, wind-blown night.

  For a moment he stood irresolute and stared west, up Forty-second Street. His skin prickled at what he saw. It was a sight that no man could ever forget, a memory that could never really fade.

  The towering buildings rose on either side, their dark windows, like sightless eyes, looking down at the dimly lit canyon below. It was quiet here -- strangely quiet -- a place brooding, barely whispering with life, waiting to die. Not a vehicle was in sight, and the only sign of movement in the street itself was a few old newspapers which the wind had snatched from the gutter and propelled along the road. David could hear them rustle as they drifted along.

  Finally one or two civilians and soldiers came along, huddled deep into their coats against the wind. The sharp click-clack of their heels on the sidewalk echoed and re-echoed dismally.

  David turned up his own coat collar and walked west, toward Times Square.

  He passed the darkened Fifth Avenue Library and suddenly became conscious that on his left there was a single dull red light hanging high in the sky, like a displaced moon. It was the glowing top of the Empire State Building. Finally, between Sixth and Broadway, he began to see signs of life. A taxicab and then two Army cars, their headlights slashing through the darkness. A few more people, a bar and grill open, a restaurant. They were dimly illuminated inside, and what patrons there were within seemed to be soldiers. Outside, the neon and electric signs, the great spectaculars, were dark -- dead.

  It's the biggest and the weirdest graveyard in the world, thought David.

  David turned right at Times Square and walked up Broadway. He looked for a cab but saw none. Carol lived up on Cathedral Parkway, West llOth Street. And, as she had said, not even the subways were running.

  There was nothing to do but walk.

  This was the theater district. He could make out some of the darkened marquee signs -- the hits that had been playing here not much longer than a month ago. Stepping Along -- the big musical down the street on one side of the deserted Astor Hotel. F.D.R. -- the biographical drama of a President whom many people still remembered and whose great dream had now gone up in smoke. There was a bit of grim irony, too, in a huge theater ad that said: "The Narrow Alley ... A Great Tragedy . . . Coming Soon

  "A Great Tragedy . . . Coming Soon . . ."

  And then suddenly Times Square became suffused in an eerie glow -- a bluish-white wash of light. Startled, David turned to look at the source.

  It was a huge television screen, high up on the side of one of the buildings. One of the networks operated it as an advertisement, bringing the Broadway crowds athletic events, news, dramas, and political speeches. It had been an instant and tremendous success. David remembered reading, back in Palomar, that they had been forced to rope off the entire Times Square area while two hundred thousand people jammed the streets to watch the last world's heavyweight championship fight.

  He blinked at the blinding light, and another memory stirred in him. The television screen was located on the exact spot where the big Camel cigarette sign once stood. As a boy he had been fascinated by the old sign. There had been a smiling man blowing smoke rings across Broadway. When the air was calm, the rings floated across like huge white doughnuts. But when it was windy, the man in the sign kept smiling, but all he could blow out were wispy puffs of smoke.

  A small knot of pedestrians and soldiers stopped on a corner to stare at the screen, and David paused with them. For a moment he wondered why the television screen was working, since there were so few spectators. Then he realized that the same images would be seen on a network system, on millions of television sets from coast to coast, and that operating the sign would make little difference in the over-all cost. His mind slipped back to the observatory at Palomar for a moment. Francis, the steward, who had been with the Old Man for twenty years, would no doubt be taking in whatever this show was going to be on the set in the reception room on the main floor. Francis was a great video and radio fan.

  The glare softened into a dull silver background, and then a title in red letters appeared;

  NEWS OF THE WORLD

  The background dissolved into a scene showing a green-colored globe of the world spinning on its axis. Then came the voice of an invisible announcer:

  "News of the world! A five-minute documentary summary brought to you every night at this time by the GENERAL TEXTILE CORPORATION, makers of DOWNYSOFT blankets and DOWNYSOFT towels.

  "And now, here is your telecaster -- Arthur Morrow!"

  The spinning globe segued into a scene of a paneled study lined with bookshelves. A gray-haired man sat at a desk. He smiled at David and the others. Then the smile disappeared, and he looked professionally grim. He stared straight into the eyes of his watchers and then spoke.

  "Good evening. This is Arthur
Morrow. Tonight the world waits and wonders. The tension grows, becomes almost unbearable. And on the end of everyone's tongue is the same terrible question: 'Will it come? Will it really come at last?' "

  The man on the screen leaned back in his leather chair, shook his head.

  "No one knows. We can only hope and pray that in this last desperate moment Man will come to his senses. Even now, at this very moment, Mr. William Allison, our Secretary of State and special envoy of the President, is on his way to the Kremlin to meet in extraordinary session with Mr. Bakhanov, the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union. In a moment we hope to telecast this historic event for you direct from the new Kremlin at Kirensk, in Asiatic Russia. Permission for this strange raising of the censorship curtain comes from the Soviet government. It is their claim that they are doing this to illustrate to us, and to the world, that it, too, is willing to compromise. At any rate, they are making much of it in their propaganda line. . . ."