Eye in the Sky (1957) by Philip K Dick

Author:Philip K Dick [Dick, Philip K]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Philip K Dick
Published: 1957-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

Troubled, Silky continued to gaze at him until a muffled squeak of brakes ahead forced her to turn back to the highway.

“Honk,” Hamilton instructed her. A mammoth oil truck on their right was crowding into their lane.

“What?” Silky asked.

Annoyed, Hamilton reached over and tapped the horn. Nothing happened; no sound came out.

“Why did you do that?” Silky asked curiously, slowing down to allow the truck clearance ahead of her.

Relapsing back into meditation, Hamilton filed away another piece of datum in his storehouse of wisdom. In this world, the category car horn had been abolished. And, in the thick homeward bound traffic, there should have been a constant din.

In cleaning up the ills of the world, Edith Pritchet eradicated, not merely objects, but whole classes of objects. Probably, at some remote time and place, she had been annoyed by a honking car. Now, in her pleasant fantasy version of the world, such things didn’t exist. They simply weren’t.

Her list of annoyances was undoubtedly considerable. And there was no way to tell what was included. He couldn’t help thinking of Koko’s song in The Mikado:

… But it really doesn’t matter whom you put upon the

list,

For they’d none of ‘em be missed—they’d none of ‘em be missed!

Not an encouraging thought. Whatever thing, object, or event had at any time in her fifty-odd years stirred the smooth surface of her vapid enjoyment was gently eased out of existence. He could guess a few. Garbage men who rattled cans. Door-to-door salesmen. Bills and tax forms of all lands. Crying babies (perhaps all babies). Drunks. Filth. Poverty. Suffering in general.

It was a wonder anything was left.

“What’s the matter?” Silky asked sympathetically. “Don’t you feel well?”

“It’s the smog,” he told her. “It always makes me a little ill.”

“What,” Silky inquired, “is smog? What a funny word.”

For a long time there was no conversation; Hamilton simply sat and tried vainly to hang onto his reason.

“Would you like to stop somewhere along the way?” Silky asked sympathetically. “For a glass of lemonade?”

“Will you shut up!” Hamilton shouted.

Blinking, Silky shot him a mute glance of fear.

“Sorry.” Slumped over, Hamilton fumbled for a labored apology. “New job—tough going.”

“I can imagine.”

“You can?” He couldn’t keep the icy cynicism out of his voice. “By the way—you were going to tell me. What’s your racket, these days?”

“Same thing.”

“And what the heck is that?”

“I’m still working at the Safe Harbor.”

A measure of confidence returned to Hamilton. Some things, at least, endured. There was still a Safe Harbor. Some small segment of reality carried over for him to hang his assurance on. “Let’s go there,” he said greedily.

“A couple of beers, before we go home.”

When they reached Belmont, Silky parked across the street from the bar. Critically, Hamilton sat inspecting it. At a distance, the bar wasn’t particularly changed. A trifle cleaner, perhaps. More spick and span. The nautical element was intensified; the allusions to alcohol seemed to have subtly diminished. In fact, he had trouble reading the Golden Glow sign. The bright red letters seemed to fuse together into a nondescript blur.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.