Eye

  "Wouldn't he be likely to go directly to Charlesworthy with it?" asked Margaret.

  "Hah!" barked Selma. "You don't know Betty's side of our family!"

  Dr. Linquist arrived in the middle of the morning, two consultant psychiatrists in tow. They spent an hour with David, came down to the kitchen where Margaret and Rita were finishing the microfilming of the recipe files. David followed them, stood in the doorway.

  "The boy's apparently tougher than I realized," said Linquist. "Are you sure he hasn't been told he can take that piano? I hope you haven't been misleading him to make him feel better."

  David frowned.

  Margaret said: "Dr. Charlesworthy refused to take the piano when I asked him. However, he's sent two experts to the Steinway factory so we'll be sure of an exact duplicate."

  Linquist turned to David. "And that's all right with you, David?"

  David hesitated, then: "I understand about the weight."

  "Well, I guess you're growing up," said Linquist.

  When the psychiatrists had gone, Rita turned on Margaret. "Mother! You lied to them!"

  "No she didn't," said David. "She told the exact truth."

  “But not all of it," said Margaret.

  “That's just the same as lying" said Rita.

  “Oh, stop it!'' snapped Margaret. Then: “David, are you sure you want to leave your braille texts?''

  “Yes. That's sixteen pounds. We've got the braille punch kit and the braille typewriter; I can type new copies of everything I'll need if Rita will read to me.''

  By three o'clock that afternoon they had Chief Steward Oswald Lucan's reluctant agreement to smuggle the piano aboard if they could get the weight allowance precise to the ounce. But Lucan's parting words were: “Don't let the old man get wind of this. He's boiling about the equipment we've had to cut out.''

  At seven-thirty, Margaret added the first day's weight donations: sixty-one commitments for a total of two hundred and seven pounds and seven ounces. Not enough from each person, she told herself But I can't blame them. We're all tied to our possessions. It's so hart to part with all the little things that link us with the past and with Earth. We've got to find more weight somewhere. She cast about in her own mind for things to discard, knew a sense of futility at the few pounds she had at her disposal.

  By ten o'clock on the morning of the third day they had 554 pounds and 8 ounces from 160 of their fellow colonists. They also had an even twenty violent rejections. The tension of fear that one of these twenty might give away their conspiracy was beginning to tell on Margaret.

  David, too, was sinking back into gloom. He sat on the piano bench in the music room, Margaret behind him in her favorite chair. One of David's hands gently caressed the keys that Maurice Hatchell had brought to such crashing life.

  “We're getting less than four pounds per person, aren't we?'' asked David.

  Margaret rubbed her cheek. “Yes."

  A gentle chord came from the piano. “We aren't going to make it," said David. A fluid rippling of music lifted in the room. "I'm not sure we have the right to ask this of people anyway. They're giving up so much already, and then we..."

  "Hush, Davey."

  He let the baby name pass, coaxed a floating passage of Debussy from the keys.

  Margaret put her hands to her eyes, cried silently with fatigue and frustration. But the tears coming from David's fingers on the piano went deeper.

  Presently, he stood up, walked slowly out of the room, up the stairs. She heard his bedroom door close softly. The lack of violence in his actions cut her like a knife.

  The phone chime broke Margaret from her blue reverie. She took the call on the portable in the hall. Selma Atkins's features came onto the screen, wide-eyed, subdued.

  "Ozzy just called me," she blurted. "Somebody snitched to Charlesworthy this morning."

  Margaret put a hand over her mouth.

  "Did you tell your husband what we were doing?" asked Selma.

  "No." Margaret shook her head. "I was going to and then I got afraid of what he'd say. He and Charlesworthy are very close friends, you know."

  "You mean he'd peach on his own wife?"

  "Oh, no, but he might..."

  "Well, he's on the carpet now," said Selma. "Ozzy says the whole base is jumping. He was shouting and banging his hands on the desk at Walter and..."

  "Charlesworthy?"

  "Who else? I called to warn you. He..."

  "But what'll we do?" asked Margaret.

  "We run for cover, honey. We fall back and regroup. Call me as soon as you've talked to him. Maybe we can think of a new plan."

  "We've contributions from more than half the colonists," said Margaret. "That means we've more than half of them on our side to begin..."

  "Right now the colony organization is a dictatorship, not a democracy," said Selma. "But I'll be thinking about it. Bye now."

  David came up behind her as she was breaking the connection. "I heard," he said. "That finishes us, doesn't it?"

  The phone chimed before she could answer him. She flipped the switch. Walter's face came onto the screen. He looked haggard, the craggy lines more pronounced.

  "Margaret," he said. "I'm calling from Dr. Charlesworthy's office." He took a deep breath. "Why didn't you come to me about this? I could've told you how foolish it was!"

  "That's why!" she said.

  "But smuggling a piano onto the ship! Of all the..."

  "I was thinking of Davey!" she snapped.

  "Good Lord, I know it! But..."

  "When the doctors said he might die if he lost his..."

  "But Margaret, a thousand-pound piano!"

  "Fourteen hundred and eight pounds," she corrected him.

  "Let's not argue, darling," he said. "I admire your guts... and I love you, but I can't let you endanger the social solidarity of the colony group. . ."he shook his head, "not even for David."

  "Even if it kills your own son?" she demanded.

  "I'm not about to kill my son," he said. "I'm an ecologist, remember? It's my job to keep us alive... as a group and singly! And I..."

  "Dad's right," said David. He moved up beside Margaret.

  "I didn't know you were there, son," said Walter.

  "It's all right, Dad."

  "Just a moment, please." It was Charlesworthy, pushing in beside Walter. "I want to know how much weight allowance you've been promised."

  "Why?" asked Margaret. "So you can figure how many more scientific toys to take along?"

  "I want to know how close you are to success in your little project," he said.

  "Five hundred and fifty-four pounds and eight ounces," she said. "Contributions from one hundred and sixty people!"

  Charlesworthy pursed his lips. "Just about one-third of what you need," he said. "And at this rate you wouldn't get enough. If you had any chance of success I'd almost be inclined to say go ahead, but you can see for yourself that..."

  "I have an idea," said David.

  Charlesworthy looked at him. "You're David?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What's your idea?"

  "How much would the harp and keyboard from my piano weigh? You have people at the factory..."

  "You mean take just that much of your piano?" asked Charlesworthy.

  "Yes, sir. It wouldn't be the same... it'd be better. It would have roots in both worlds—part of the piano from Earth and part from Planet C."

  "Darned if I don't like the idea," said Charlesworthy. He turned. "Walter, call Phil Jackson at the Steinway plant. Find out how much that portion of the piano would weigh."

  Walter felt the field of the screen. The others waited. Presently, Walter returned, said: "Five hundred and sixty-two pounds, more or less. Hector Torres was on the line, too. He said he's sure he can duplicate the rest of the piano exactly."

  Charlesworthy smiled. "That's it, then! I'm out of my mind ... we need so many other things with us so desperately. But maybe we need this too: for morale."

 
"With the right morale we can make anything else we may need," said Walter.

  Margaret found a scratch pad in the phone drawer, scribbled figures on it. She looked up:"I'll get busy right now and find a way to meet the extra few pounds we'll need to..."

  "How much more?" asked Charlesworthy.

  Margaret looked down at her scratch pad. "Seven pounds and eight ounces."

  Charlesworthy took a deep breath. "While I'm still out of my mind, let me make another gesture: Mrs. Charlesworthy and I will contribute seven pounds and eight ounces to the cultural future of our new home."

  DEATH OF A CITY

  It was such a beautiful city, Bjska thought. An observer's eyes could not avoid the overwhelming beauty. As the

  City Doctor called to treat the city, Bjska found the beauty heartbreaking. He found his thoughts drawn again and again to the individuals who called this place home, two hundred and forty-one thousand humans who now faced the prospect of homeless lives.

  Bjska stared across open water at the city from the wooded peninsula that protected the inner harbor. The low light of late afternoon cast a ruddy glow on the scene. His eyes probed for flaws, but from this distance not even the tastefully applied patches could be seen.

  Why was I chosen for this? he asked himself. Then: If the damn fools had only built an ugly city!

  Immediately, he rejected this thought. It made as much sense as to ask why Mieri, the intern who stood near the omithopter behind him, personified such feminine beauty. Such things happened. It was the task of a City Doctor to recognize inescapable facts and put them in their proper context.

  Bjska continued to study the city, striving for the objective/ subjective synthesis that his calling demanded. The city's builders had grafted their ideas onto the hills below the mountains with such a profound emotional sense of harmony that no trick of the eye could reject their creation. Against a backdrop of snow peaks and forests, the builders had rightly said: "The vertical threatens a man; it puts danger above him. A man cannot relax and achieve human balance in a vertical setting."

  Thus, they had built a city whose very rightness might condemn it. Had they even suspected what they had created? Bjska thought it unlikely.

  How could the builders have missed it? he asked himself.

  Even as the question appeared in his mind, he put it down. It served no purpose for him to cry out against the circumstances that said he must make this decision. The City Doctor was here on behalf of the species, a representative of all humans together. He must act for them.

  The city presented an appearance of awesome solidity that Bjska knew to be false. It could be destroyed quite easily. He had but to give the order, certifying his decision with his official seal. People would rage against fate, but they would obey. Families would be broken and scattered. The name of this place would be erased from all but the City Doctors' records. The natural landscape would be restored and there would remain no visible sign that a city such as this one had stood here. In time, only the builders of cities would remember this place, and that as a warning.

  Behind him, Mieri cleared her throat. She would speak out soon, Bjska relaized. She had been patient, but they were past the boundaries of patience. He resisted an impulse to turn and feast his eyes upon her beauty as a change from the cityscape. That was the problem. There would be so little change in trading one prospect of beauty for another.

  While Mieri fidgeted he continued to delay. Was there no alternative? Mieri had left her own pleadings unvoiced, but Bjska had heard them in every word she uttered. This was Mieri's own city. She had been bom here—beauty bom in beauty. Where was the medical point of entry in this city?

  Bjska allowed his frustration to escape in a sigh.

  The city played its horizontal lines across the hills with an architecture that opened outward, that expanded, that condemned no human within its limits to a containerized existence. The choice of where every element should stand had been made with masterful awareness of the human psyche. Where things that grew without man's interference should grow, there they were. Where structures would amplify existing forms, there stood the required structures... precisely! Every expectation of the human senses had been met. And it was in this very conformity to human demands that the cancerous flaw arose.

  Bjska shook his head sadly. If conformity were the definition of artistic survival...

  As he had anticipated, Mieri moved closer behind him, said, "Sometimes when I see it from out here I think my city is too beautiful. Words choke in my throat. I long for words to describe it and there are none." Her voice rang with musical softness in the quiet evening air.

  Bjska thought: My city! She had said it and not heard herself saying it. A City Doctor could have no city.

  He said, "Many have tried and failed. Even photographs fall short of the reality. A supreme holopaint artist might capture it, but only for a fleeting moment."

  "I wish every human in the universe could see my city," Mieri said.

  "I do not share that wish," Bjska said. And he wondered if this bald statement was enough to shock her into the required state of awareness. She wanted to be a City Doctor? Let her stretch into the inner world as well as the outer.

  He sensed her weighing his words. Beauty could play such a vitalizing role in human life that the intellect tended to overlook its devitalizing possibilities. If beauty could not be ignored, was that not indiscreet? The fault was blatancy. There was something demandingly immodest about the way this city gilded its hills, adding dimension to the peaks behind it. One saw the city and did not see it.

  Mieri knew this! Bjska told himself. She knew it as she knew that Bjska loved her. Why not? Most men who saw her loved her and desired her. Why had she no lovers then? And why had her city no immigrants? Had she ever put both of these questions to herself, setting them in tension against each other? It was the sort of thing a City Doctor must do. The species knew the source of its creative energy. The Second Law made the source plain.

  He said, "Mieri, why does a City Doctor have such awesome powers? I can have the memories of whole populations obliterated, selectively erased, or have individuals thus treated. I can even cause death. You aspire to such powers. Why do we have them?"

  She said, "To make sure that the species faces up to Infinity."

  He shook his head sadly. A rote answer! She gave him a rote answer when he'd demanded personal insight!

  The awareness that had made Bjska a City Doctor pervaded him. Knowledge out of his most ancient past told him the builders of this city had succeeded too well. Call it chance or fate. It was akin to the genetic moment that had produced Mieri's compelling beauty—the red-gold hair, the green eyes, the female proportions applied with such exactitude that a male might feast his senses, but never invest his flesh. There existed a creative peak that alarmed the flesh. Bjska stood securely in his own stolid, round-faced ugliness, knowing this thing. Mieri must find that inner warmth that spoke with chemical insistence of latent wrinkles and aging.

  What would Mieri do if her city died before its time?

  If she was ever to be a City Doctor, she must be made to understand this lesson of the flesh and the spirit.

  He said, “Do you imagine there's a city more beautiful in the entire world?"

  She thought she heard bantering in his voice and wondered: Is he teasing? It was a shocking thought. City Doctors might joke to keep their own sanity in balance, but at such a time as this... with so much at stake...

  "There must be a city more beautiful somewhere," she said.

  "Where?"

  She took a deep breath to put down profound disquiet. "Are you making fun of my city?" she demanded. "How can you? It's a sick city and you know it!" She felt her lips quiver, moisture at the comers of her eyes. She experienced both fear and shame. She loved her city, but it was sick. The outbreaks of vandalism, the lack of creativity here, the departure of the best people, the blind violence from random elements of its citizenry when they moved to othe
r settings. All had been traced back here. The sickness had its focus in her city. That was why a City Doctor had come. She had worked hard to have that doctor be Bjska, her old teacher, and more than the honor of working with him once more had been involved. She had felt a personal need.

  "I'm sorry," Bjska said. "This is the city where you were bom and I understand your concern. I am the teacher now. I wish to share my thought processes with you. What is it we must do most carefully as we diagnose?"

  She looked across the water at the city, feeling the coolness of onrushing nightfall, seeing the lights begin to wink on, the softness of low structures and blended greenery, the pastel colors and harmony. Her senses demanded more than this, however. You did not diagnose a city just by its appearance. Why had Bjska brought her here? The condition of a city's inhabitants represented a major concern. Transient individuals, always tenants on the land, were the single moving cells. Only the species owned land, owned cities. A City Doctor was hired by the species. In effect, he diagnosed the species. They told him the imprint of the setting. It had been a gigantic step toward Infinity when the species had recognized that settings might contribute to its illnesses.

  "Are you diagnosing me to diagnose the city?" she asked.

  "I diagnose my own reactions," he said. "I find myself loving your city with a fierce protectiveness that at the same time repels me and insists that I scar this place. Having seen this city, I will try to find pieces of it in every other city, but I will now know what I seek because I have not really experienced this city. Every other city will be found wanting and I will not know what it wants."

  Mieri felt suddenly threatened and wondered: What is he trying to tell me? There was threat in Bjska's words. It was as though he had been transformed abruptly into a dirty old man who demanded obscene things of her, who affronted her. He was dangerous! Her city was too good for him! He was a square, ugly little man who offended her city whenever he entered it.

  Even as these reactions pulsed through her awareness, she sensed her training taking its dominant place. She had been educated to become a City Doctor. The species relied on her. Humans had given her a matrix by which to keep them on the track through Infinity.