The Big Eye Read Online Free Page A

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. . . ."
     
     
Someone in the knot