Eye In The Sky

“People like your wife are dangerous.”

“Why?” Hamilton asked.

“They don’t belong to any group. They fool around with everything. As soon as we turn our back—”

“So you destroy them. You turn them over to the lunatic patriots.”

“The lunatic patriots,” McFeyffe said, “we can understand. But not your wife. She signs Party peace petitions and she reads the Chicago Tribune. People like her—they’re more of a menace to Party discipline than any other bunch. The cult of individualism. The idealist with his own law, his own ethics. Refusing to accept authority. It undermines society. It topples the whole structure. Nothing lasting can be built on it. People like your wife just won’t take orders.”

This time, there was no punishment from above. Sighing, Hamilton almost wished there had been; the capricious personality element infuriated him. There was just too little relationship between deed and punishment; the lightning was probably cutting down some totally innocent Cheyennite, on the far side of town.

“Time to get up,” he informed her. “Don’t you hear the Almighty bellowing in the living room?”

“What’s he saying?” Marsha murmured crossly.

“Nothing in particular. Repent or suffer eternal damnation. The usual tribal tub-thumping.”

“Why?” Hamilton lashed out suddenly and loudly. “Why the hell did God answer that prayer? Why not some of the others? Why not Bill Laws’s?”

“God approved of your prayer,” Silky said. “After all, it’s up to Him; He has to decide how He feels about it.”

“That’s terrible.”

Silky shrugged. “Maybe so.”

“How can you live with that? You never know what’s going to happen—there’s no order, no logic.” It infuriated him that she did not object, that it seemed natural to her. “We’re helpless; we have to depend on whim. It keeps us from being people—we’re like animals waiting to be fed. Rewarded or punished.”

“You know what you can buy at the supermarket?” Laws inquired acidly. “I’ll tell you. Canned burnt offerings.”

“You know what you can buy at the hardware store?” Hamilton answered. “Scales to weigh your soul on.”

“That’s silly,” the blond said petulantly. “A soul doesn’t have any weight.”

“Then,” Hamilton reflected, “you could put one through the U. S. mail for nothing.”

“How many souls,” Laws conjectured ironically, “can be fitted into one stamped envelope? New religious question. Split mankind in half. Warring factions. Blood running in the gutters.”

“Ten,” Hamilton guessed.

“Fourteen,” Laws contradicted.

“Heretic. Baby-murdering monster.”

“Bestial drinker of unpurified blood.”

“Accursed spawn of filth-devouring evil.”

“Explain it,” Hamilton muttered. “This place—this bar. Why doesn’t God erase it? If this world operates by moral laws—”

“This bar is necessary to the moral order. This is a sinkpit of corruption and vice, a fleshpot of iniquity. You think salvation can function without damnation? You think virtue can exist without sin? That’s the trouble with you atheists; you don’t grasp the mechanics of evil. Get on the inside and enjoy life, man. If you’re one of the Faithful, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Opportunist.”

“Bet your sweet soul.”

“Cats have no souls,” Hamilton said morbidly, watching his tomcat avidly feed. “The most majestic cat in the universe would balance a carrot on his head for a bite of pork liver.”

In all possible universes, Monday was the same.

The hymns were unfamiliar to him, but he quickly picked up the general beat. The hymns had a redundant simplicity; the same phrases and tones appeared and reappeared. The same monotonous ideas, repeated indefinitely. The appetite of (Tetragrammaton) was insatiable, he concluded. A childish, nebulous personality that required constant praise—and in the most obvious terms. Quick to anger, (Tetragrammaton) was equally quick to sink into euphoria, was eager and ready to lap up these blatant flatteries.

A balance. A method of lulling the Deity. But what a delicate mechanism. Danger for everyone...The easily-aroused Presence that was always nearby. Always listening.

The hell with him, he thought bitterly. The hell with patriotism in general. In the specific and the abstract. Birds of a feather, soldiers and cops. Anti-intellectual and anti-Negro. Anti-everything except beer, dogs, cars and guns.