Time is the Simplest Thing

SIXTEEN

You cannot see a mind.

But the Pinkness saw it, or sensed it — or at least it knew that the mind was there.

And to Shepherd Blaine there was no surprise and no alienness. It seemed almost as if he were coming home, for the bright blue of the room was much more homelike and familiar than it had seemed that first time.

Well, the Pinkness said, looking the mind up and down, you make a pretty pair!

And that was it, of course, thought the part of the mind that still was Shepherd Blaine — he, or at least a part of him, perhaps as much as half of him, had come home, indeed. For he was, in some percentage not yet determined, perhaps impossible to determine, a part of the alien he faced. He was Shepherd Blaine, traveler from Earth, and likewise a carbon copy of this thing that dwelt in the bright blue room.

And how are you getting on? the alien asked most affably. As if he didn’t know.

There is just one thing, said Blaine, hurrying to get it in against the time when he might be forced to go from here. There is just one thing. You’ve made us like a mirror. We bounce back at people.

Why, of course, the alien told him. That is the only way to do it. On an alien planet you would need some shielding. You don’t want intelligences prying round in you. So you bounce back their prying. Here at home, of course, there would be no need. . . .

But you don’t understand, protested Blaine. It doesn’t protect us. It attracts attention to us. It almost got us killed.

There is no such thing, the alien told Blaine, gruffly. There is no such thing as killed. There is no such thing as death. It is such a horrid waste. Although I may be wrong. It seems to me that there was a planet, very long ago . . .

One could almost hear him riffling through the dry filing cases of his cluttered memory.

Yes, he said, there was a planet. There were several planets. And it was a shame. I cannot understand it. It makes no sense at all.

I can assure you, Blaine told him, that on my planet there is death for everything. For every single thing. . . .

For everything?

Well, I can’t be sure. Perhaps . . .

You see, the creature said. Even on your planet it is not universal.

I do not know, said Blaine. It seems to me that I remember there are deathless things.

Normal things, you mean.

Death has a purpose, Blaine persisted. It is a process, a function that has made the development of species and the differentiation of species possible on my planet. It averts the dead end. It is an eraser that wipes out mistakes, that provides for new beginnings.

The Pinkness settled down. You could sense its settling down — smugly, primly getting set for a long and satisfactory exchange of ideas and, perhaps, an argument.

It may be so, it said, but it’s very primitive. It goes back to the ooze. There are better ways. There even is a point where there is no further need of this improvement that you speak of.

But, first of all, he asked, are you satisfied?

Satisfied?

Well, you’re an improved thing yourself. An expanded thing. You are part yourself and you are partly me.

And you are partly me as well.

The Pinkness seemed to chuckle. But there are just the two of you — yourself and me — and I am so many things I cannot begin to tell you. I have done a lot of visiting and I’ve picked up a lot of things, including many minds, and some of them, I don’t mind telling you, were hardly worth the trading. But do you know, for all the visiting I’ve done, almost no one ever visits me. I cannot tell you how I appreciate this visit. There was a being once who came to visit me quite often, but it was so long ago it’s a bit hard to recall. By the way, you measure time, don’t you — surface time, that is?

Blaine told him how humans measure time.

Hm, now, let’s see, the creature said, doing rapid mental calculation, that would make it about ten thousand of your years ago.

That this creature came to visit you?

That is right, the Pinkness said. You are the first since then. And you came visiting me. You didn’t wait for me to visit you. And you had that machine. . . .

How come, Blaine asked, you had to ask me about our count of time? You had it all. You traded minds with me. You have everything I know.

Of course, the Pinkness mumbled. Of course I had it. But I hadn’t dug it out. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how cluttered up I am.

And that was true, Blaine thought. Even with just one extra mind, he was cluttered up. He wondered. . . .

Yes, of course, the Pinkness told him. You’ll get it straightened out in time. It takes a little while. You’ll become one mind, not two. You’ll get together. You’ll make a team. You like it this way, don’t you?

It’s been a little rough, this mirror business.

I’m not bent on causing trouble, said the Pinkness. I only do the best I can. So I make mistakes. So I fix it up. I take the mirror off, I cancel it. O.K.?

O.K., said Blaine.

I sit here, said the Pinkness, and I go visiting. Without stirring from this place, I go anyplace I wish and you’d be surprised how few minds I find that I’d care to trade for.

In ten thousand years, however, you’d pick up a lot of them.

Ten thousand years, said the creature, startled. Ten thousand years, my friend, is only yesterday.

He sat there, mumbling, reaching back and back and not reaching the beginning and he finally gave it up.

And there are so few of them, he complained, that can handle a second mind. I must be careful of them. There are a lot of them that think they are possessed. Some of these would go insane if I traded with them. You, perhaps, can understand.

Readily, said Blaine.

Come, said the Pinkness, and sit down here beside me.

I’m scarcely, Blaine explained, in a condition to do much sitting.

Oh, yes, I see, the creature said. I should have thought of that. Well, then, move over closer. You came for a visit, I presume.

Naturally, said Blaine, not knowing what to say.

Then, said the creature grimly, leave us start to visit.

Certainly, said Blaine, moving somewhat closer.

Now, where shall I start? the creature asked. There are so many places and so many times and so many different creatures. It always is a problem. I suppose it comes because of a desire for neatness, an orderliness of mind. The thought persists to plague me that if I could put it all together I might arrive at something of significance. You would not mind, I presume, if I should tell you about those strange creatures that I ran into out at the edge of the galaxy.

Not at all, said Blaine.

They are rather extraordinary, said the Pinkness, in that they did not develop machines as your culture did, but became, in effect, machines themselves. . . .

Sitting there in the bright blue room, with the alien stars flaming overhead, with the faint, far-off sound of the raging desert wind a whisper in the room, the Pinkness talked — not only of the machine entities, but of many others. Of the insect tribes that piled up over endless centuries huge reserves of food for which they had no need, slaving on an endless treadmill of a blind economic mania. Of the race that made their art forms the basis of a weird religion. Of the listening posts manned by garrisons of a galactic empire that had long since been forgotten by all except the garrisons themselves. Of the fantastic and complicated sexual arrangements of yet another race of beings who, faced with the massive difficulties of procreation, thought of little else. Of planets that never had known life but rolled along their courses as gaunt and raw and naked as the day they had been formed. And of other planets that were a boiling brew pot of chemical reactions which stretched the mind to think on, let alone to understand, and of how these chemical reactions of themselves gave rise to an unstable, ephemeral sort of sentience that was life one moment and just failed of life another.

This — and yet a great deal more.

Blaine, listening, realized the true fantastic measure of this creature which he had stumbled on — an apparently deathless thing, which had no memory of its beginning, no concept of an end; a creature with a roving mind that had mentally explored, over billions of years, millions of stars and planets for millions of light years, in this present galaxy and in some of the neighbor ones; a mind that had assembled a gigantic grab box of assorted information, but information which it had made no effort to put to any use. That it, more than likely, had no idea of how to put to use, yet troubled by a vague idea that this store of knowledge should not be lying fallow.

The sort of creature that could sit in the sun for endless time and spin eccentric yarns of all that it had seen.

And for the human race, thought Blaine, here squatted an encyclopedia of galactic knowledge, here lounged an atlas that had mapped uncounted cubic light years. Here was the sort of creature that the tribe of Man could use. Here was a running off of mouth that would pay human dividends — dividends from an entity which seemed without emotion, other than a certain sense of friendliness — an entity that, perhaps, in years of armchair observation, had had all emotions, if any had existed, worn away until they were so much dust — who had not used any of the knowledge it had gained, but had not been the loser. For in all its observation, in its galactic window-peeping, it had gained a massive tolerance and an understanding, not of its own nature, not of human nature, but of every nature, an understanding of life itself, of sentience and intelligence. And a sympathy of all motives and all ethics, and of each ambition, no matter how distorted in the eyes of other life.

And all of this, as well, Blaine realized with a start, was likewise stored in the mind of one human being, of one Shepherd Blaine, if he could only separate it and classify and store it and then could dig it out and put it to proper use.

Listening, Blaine lost all sense of time, lost all knowing of what he was or where he was or why he might be there, listening as a boy might listen to some stupendous tale spun by an ancient mariner from far and unknown land.

The room became familiar and the Pinkness was a friend and the stars were no longer alien and the far-off howling of the desert wind was a cradle song that he had always known.

It was a long time before he realized he was listening only to the wind and that the stories of far away and long ago had ceased.

He stirred, almost sleepily, and the Pinkness said: That was a nice visit that we had. I think it was the best that I have ever had.

There is one thing, said Blaine. One question —

If it is the shield, the Pinkness said, you needn’t worry. I took it away. There is nothing to betray you.

It wasn’t that, said Blaine. It was time. I — that is, the two of us — have some control of time. Twice it saved my life. . . .

It is there, the Pinkness said. The understanding’s in your mind. You only have to find it.

But, time —

Time, the creature said, is the simplest thing there is. I’ll tell you . . .