Eye in the Sky (1957) by Philip K. Dick Page B

God.
    Having
accepted this, he was not particularly surprised to observe a deep
underlayer far below the grayness, a reddish film beneath the Earth. It looked
as if down at the very bottom of this
universe, a primitive mining operation was going on. Forges, blast furnaces
and, further into the distance, a kind of crude volcanic simmering sent vague flashes of sinister red to color the
nondescript medium of gray.
    It
was Hell.
    And above him … he craned his neck. Now it was clearly
visible. Heaven. This was the other end of the’ phone system: this was the station to which the electron ics men, the semanticists, the experts on
communication, the psychologists, had linked Earth. This was point A on
the great cosmic wire.
    Above the umbrella, the drifting
grayness faded out. For an interval there was nothing, not even the chill night wind that had frozen his bones. McFeyffe,
clutch ing the umbrella, watched in growing awe as the abode of God grew closer. Not much of it was visible.
An in finite wall of dense substance
stretched out, a protective layer
that blocked off any real view.
    Above the wall drifted a few
luminous specks. The specks darted and leaped like charged ions. As if they were alive.
    Probably,
they were angels. It was too soon to see.
    The umbrella rose, and so did
Hamilton’s curiosity. Amazingly, he was
quite calm. Under the circumstances it was impossible to feel emotion;
either he was totally self-controlled or he was overwhelmed. It was one or the other; there was no in-between. Soon, in
another five minutes, he would be carried above the wall. He and
McFeyffe would be looking into Heaven.
    A
long way, he thought. A long way from the moment when they had stood in
the hall of the Bevatron building, facing each other. Arguing over some petty
trifle…
    Gradually,
almost imperceptibly, the ascent of the umbrella diminished. Now it was barely rising. This was the
limit. Above this, there was no up. Idly, Hamilton wondered what would happen. Would the umbrella be gin to descend, as patiently as it had climbed? Or
would it collapse and deposit them in the middle of Heaven?
    Something
was coming into view. They were parallel with the expanse of protective material. An inane thought crept into his mind: the material was there—not
to keep passersby from seeing in—but to keep inhabitants from tumbling
out. To keep them from tumbling back down to the world from which over the
centuries, they had come.
    “We’re—”
McFeyffe wheezed. “We’re almost there.”
    “Yeah,”
Hamilton said.
    “This—has—quite
an effect on a—man’s outlook.”
    “It really does,” he
admitted. Almost, he could see. Another second … half-second … a vague glimpse of landscape was
already coming into view. A confusing vision; some kind of circular continuum,
a sort of vaguely misty place. Was it a pond, an ocean? A vast lake; swirling waters. Mountains at the far end;
an end less range of forest
shrubbery.
    Abruptly, the cosmic lake
disappeared, a curtain had swept down over
it. But then the curtain, after an inter val, swept back up. There was
the lake again, the un limited expanse of
moist substance.
    It was the biggest lake he had ever
seen. It was big enough to contain the whole
world. As long as he lived, he didn’t expect to see a bigger lake. He wondered,
idly, what the cubic capacity of it was. In the center was a denser,
more opaque substance. A land of lake within a lake. Was all Heaven just this
titanic lake? As far as he could see, there was nothing but lake.
    It
wasn’t a lake. It was an eye. And the eye was look ing at him and
McFeyffe!
    He
didn’t have to be told Whose eye it was.
    McFeyffe
screeched. His face turned black; his wind rattled in his throat. A
breath of utter fright swept over him; for an instant he danced helplessly at
the end of the umbrella, trying to force
his own fingers apart, try ing
futilely to pry himself loose from the field of vision. Trying, frantically and unsuccessfully,