Read Online Eye in the Sky (1957) by Philip K. Dick - Free Book Online Page B

“I can’t even state
Ohm’s Law.”
    “Praise be to God,” Brady
answered.
    The heathen has been struck
down,” a technician noted
scientifically. “The contest is over.”
    “This is unfair,” Hamilton
protested. “I know Ohm’s Law as well
as I know my own name.”
    “Face facts,” Brady told
him. “Admit you’re a heathen and outside tie Lord’s grace.”
    “Don’t I get to ask you
something?”
    Brady considered. “Sure. Go
ahead. Anything you want”
    “An
electron beam is deflected,” Hamilton said, “if it passes between two plates through which a voltage
is applied. The electrons are subjected to a force at right angles to their motion. Call the length of the
plates l 1 . Call
the distance from the center of the plates to the …”
    He
broke off. Slightly above Brady, close to his right ear, had appeared a mouth and hand. The mouth was quietly whispering into Brady’s ear; directed by the hand, the words vanished before Hamilton could
hear them.
    “Who’s
that?” he demanded, outraged.
    “I
beg your pardon?” Brady said innocently, waving away the mouth and
hand.
    “Who’s
kibitzing? Who’s giving you information?”
    “An
angel of the Lord,” Brady said. “Naturally.”
    Hamilton gave up. “I quit. You
win.”
    “Go on,” Brady encouraged.
“You were going to ask me to plot the deflection of the beam by this
formula.” In a few succinct phrases,
he outlined the figures Hamil ton had concocted in the privacy of his
mind. “Correct?”
    “It’s not fair,” Hamilton
began. “Of all the flagrant, blatant
cheating—”
    The angelic mouth grinned coarsely
and then said something crude in Brady’s ear. Brady permitted himself a
momentary smile. “Very funny,” he acknowledged. “Very apt, too.”
    As
the great vulgar mouth began to fade away, Hamil ton said, “Wait a
minute. Stick around. I want to talk to
you.”
    The mouth lingered. “What’s on
your mind?” it said, in a loud, rumbling, thunder-like mutter.
    “You seem to know
already,” Hamilton answered. “Didn’t
you just look?” The mouth twisted contemptuously. “If you can
look into men’s minds,” Hamilton said, “you can also look into men’s
hearts.”
    “What’s
this all about?” Brady demanded uncomfort ably. “Go bother
your own angel.”
    “There’s
a line somewhere,” Hamilton continued. “Something about the
desire to commit a sin being as bad as actually committing it.”
    “What
are you babbling about?” Brady demanded ir ritably.
    “As I construe that ancient
verse,” Hamilton said, “it’s a statement concerning the psychological
problem of motivation. It classes motive as the cardinal moral point, an
actually committed sin being merely the overt outgrowth of the evil desire.
Right and wrong depend not on what a man does but on what a man feels.”
    The angelic mouth made an agreeing
motion. “What you say is true.”
    “These
men,” Hamilton said, indicating the technicians, “are acting as Champions of the One True God. They are rooting out heathenism. But in
their hearts lie evil motives. Back of their zealous actions lies a hard core
of sinful desire.”
    Brady gulped. “What do you
mean?”
    “Your motive for screening me
out of EDA is venal. You’re jealous of me.
And jealousy, as a motive, is un acceptable. I call attention to this as
a coreligionist” Mildly, Hamilton added, “It’s my duty.”
    “Jealousy,”
the angel repeated. “Yes, jealousy falls into the category of sin. Except in the sense of the
Lord being a jealous God. In that usage, the term expresses the con cept
that only One True God can exist. Worship of any other quasi-God is a denial of
His Nature, and a return to
pre-Islamism.”
    “But,”
Brady protested, “a Babiist can jealously pursue the Lord’s
work.”
    “Jealously in the sense that he
excludes all other work and loyalties,” the angel said. “There is
that one use of the term which does not involve negative moral