Time is the Simplest Thing

NINETEEN

“Don’t you think we should drive a little farther?” Harriet asked. “If that doctor should get suspicious . . .”

Stone wheeled the car into the drive.

“Why should he get suspicious?”

“He’ll get to thinking. He’s puzzled by what happened to Shep and he’ll get to wondering. After all, our story had a lot of holes in it.”

“For one thought up on the moment, I thought we did real well.”

“But we’re only ten miles out of town.”

“I’ll want to go back tonight. I have to do some checking on what became of Riley’s truck.”

He braked the car to a halt in front of the unit marked “Office.”

“Run your head into a noose, you mean,” said Harriet. The man who had been sweeping off the steps walked over to the car.

“Welcome, folks,” he said, heartily. “What can the Plainsman do for you?”

“Have you two connecting?”

“It just so happens,” said the man, “we have. Nice weather we been having.”

“Yes, very splendid weather.”

“Might turn cold, though. Any day. It is getting late. I can remember when we had snow—”

“But not this year,” said Stone.

“No, not this year. You were saying you wanted two connecting.”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Drive right on, straight ahead. Numbers ten and eleven. I’ll get the keys and be right along.”

Stone lifted the car on gentle jets and slid down the roadway. Other cars were parked cozily against their units. People were unloading trunks. Others were sitting in chairs on the little patios. Down at the far end of the parkway a foursome of old codgers were loudly pitching horseshoes.

The car skidded into the space before No. 10 and settled easily to the ground.

Blaine got out and held the door for Harriet.

And it was good, he thought, it was almost like home to be with these two again — with two who had been lost and now were here again. No matter what might happen, he was with his own once more.

The motel sat atop the bluffs above the river, and from where he stood he could see the wide sweep of terrain north and east — the bald, brown bluffs and the erosion of the timbered gullies and ravines that ran down to the river valley, where a tangled expanse of ragged woods hemmed in the chocolate-flowing stream which meandered with an uneasiness of purpose, as if it could not quite make up its mind where it wished to go, leaving behind it, as landmarks of its indecision, isolated ponds and lakes and crazily winding sloughs as erratic in their course as the river ever could be.

There was a cleanness and a roominess that caught one’s imagination. There was a breath of freshness and the sense of space.

The manager came trotting down the walk, jangling a couple of keys. He unlocked the doors and flung them open.

“You’ll find everything O.K.,” he said. “We are very careful. There are shutters for all windows, and the locks throughout are the best available. You’ll find a supply of hex signs and good luck charms in the supply cabinet. We used to have them installed, but we found our guests have their own ideas on how they are best used.”

“That,” said Stone, “is very thoughtful of you.”

“It is good,” said the manager, “to be snug and under cover.”

“You said a mouthful, pal,” said Stone.

“And we have a restaurant up front. . . .”

“We’ll be using it,” said Harriet. “I am almost starved.”

“You can stop on your way,” said the manager, “and sign the register, if you would.”

“Of course,” said Harriet.

He handed her the keys and went jogging up the walk, bobbing and bowing in merry hostship to the occupants of the other units.

“Let’s get inside,” said Stone.

He held the door for Harriet and Blaine, then stepped in himself and closed the door behind him.

Harriet tossed the keys down on a dresser and turned around to look about the room.

“And you,” she said to Blaine. “Whatever happened to you? I went back to that place on the border and the town was in a stew. Something dreadful had happened. I never found out what. I never had a chance to learn. I had to get out fast.”

“I got away,” Blaine told her.

Stone held out his hand. “You did it better than I did. You got clean away.”

Blaine’s hand was engulfed in Stone’s great fist and held there — not shaken up and down, but held there.

“It’s good to have you here,” said Stone.

“You phoned that night,” said Blaine, “or I’d have been caught flat-footed. I remembered what you said. I didn’t wait around for them to put the finger on me.

Stone let go of his hand and they stood facing one another and it was a different Stone who stood there than the one that Blaine remembered. Stone had always been a big man and he was still a big man, but now the bigness was not only physical and external — there was a bigness of the spirit and of purpose that one must sense immediately at the sight of him. And a hardness that had not been there before.

“I am not sure,” Blaine told him, “that I’ve done you any favor, showing up like this. I traveled slow and awkward. By now Fishhook more than likely has a hounder on me.”

Stone made a motion to dismiss the thought, almost a motion of impatience, as if Fishhook could not matter here, as if Fishhook mattered nowhere any more.

He moved across the room and sat down in a chair.

“What happened to you, Shep?”

“I got contaminated.”

“So did I,” said Stone.

He was silent for a moment, as if he might be thinking back to that time when he had fled from Fishhook.

“I turned from the phone,” he said, “and they were waiting for me. I went along with them. There was nothing else to do. They took me to a place . . .” (A great sprawling place set upon a seacoast, with one huge rambling house — white, so white it glistened — with the sky so blue above it that the blueness hurt one’s eyes, a blue that picked up and reflected back the brightness of the sun, and yet a blue with depth that one could gaze into so far that he was lost in distance. And around the sprawling building, other buildings that fell short of the sprawling big house only because of their lack of size. A sweep of lawn that one knew instantly could grow so lushly only by virtue of constant watering. Beyond the green of lawn lay a snow-shite strip of sandy beach and the green-blue of the ocean with the froth of spray thrown high into the air where the surf came hammering in on the rocks beyond the beach. And upon the beach the gypsy color of many umbrellas . . . .)

“It was, I found out later, in Baja California. A perfect wilderness of a place with this fabulous resort planted in the wilderness . . .” (The golf course flags flapping in the ocean breeze, the flat white rectangles of the tennis court, the patio with the guests sitting idly and talking, waiting for the liquor carts and the sandwich trays and dressed in vacation costumes that were impeccable.) “There was fishing such as you had never dreamed of and hunting in the hills and swimming the entire year around . . .”

“Hard to take,” said Harriet, idly.

“No,” said Stone, “not hard to take at all. Not for six weeks. Not even for six months. There was everything a man might want. There was food and drink and women. Your slightest wish was filled. Your money was no good. Everything was free.”

“But I can see,” said Blaine, “how a man might—”

“Of course you can,” said Stone. “The utter uselessness. As if someone had taken you, a man, and turned you back into a boy, with nothing left but play. And yet Fishhook was being kind. Even as you hated it and resented it and rebelled against it, you could see their point. They had nothing against us, really. There had been no crime, no negligence of duty — that is, with most of us there hadn’t. But they couldn’t take the chance of continuing to use us and they could not turn us loose, for there must, you understand, be no blot upon the Fishhook name. It never must be said of them that they turned loose upon the world a man with a streak of alienness, with a mind or an emotion that deviated even by a hairsbreadth from the human viewpoint. So they gave us a long vacation — an endless vacation — in the kind of place that millionaires inhabit.

“And it was insidious. You hated it and still you could not leave, for common sense would tell you that you were a fool to leave it. You were living safe and high. There was no question of security. You really had it made. You thought about escaping — although you could scarcely think of it as escape, for there was nothing really holding you. That is, until you tried. Then you found out about the guards and outposts. Only then you learned that every trail and road was covered. This despite the fact that a man afoot would have been committing suicide to go charging out into the land. You found out, by slow degrees, about the men who watched you all the time — the men who posed as guests but were really Fishhook agents who kept an eye on every one of you, waiting for the sign that you were getting set, or even thinking of getting out of there.

“But the bars that held you, the bars that kept you in were the luxury and soft living. It is hard to walk out on a thing like that. And Fishhook knows it is. It is, I tell you, Shep, the tightest, hardest prison man has yet devised.

“But, like any other prison, it made you tough and hard. It made you fight to get tough and hard, to get tough enough to make up your mind, and hard enough, once you’d made it up, to carry out your plan. When you learned about the spies and guards, you got sly and clever, and those very spies and guards were the ones who gave you purpose.

Fishhook overplayed its hand by building in any security at all, for none was really needed. Left to yourself, you might have escaped every second week, but come trailing back when you found how rough it was outside. But when you found that there were physical barriers — when you found out about the men and guns and dogs — then you had a challenge and it became a game and it was your life you were shoving out into the pot. . . .”

“But,” said Blaine, “there couldn’t have been too many escapes, not even many tries. Otherwise Fishhook would have dreamed up new angles. They’d never let it stand.”

Stone grinned wolfishly. “You’re right. There were not many who ever made it. There were few who even tried.”

“You and Lambert Finn.”

“Lambert,” Stone said, dryly, “was a daily inspiration for me. He’d escaped some years before I was taken there. And there was one other, years before Lambert. No one knows to this day what ever happened to him.”

“Well, O.K.,” asked Blaine, “what does happen to a man who escapes from Fishhook, who runs away from Fishhook? Where does he end up? Here I am, with a couple of dollars in my pocket that aren’t even mine, but belong to Riley, without identity, without a profession or a trade. How do I—”

“You sound as if you might regret having run away.”

“There are times I have. Momentarily, that is. If I had it to do over, I’d do it differently. I’d have it planned ahead. I’d transfer some funds to some other country. I’d have a new identity all worked out and pat. I’d have boned up on something that would turn me into an economic asset—”

“But you never really believed that you’d have to run. You knew it had happened to me, but you told yourself it couldn’t happen to yourself.”

“I guess that is about the size of it.”

“You feel,” said Stone, “that you’ve turned into a misfit.”

Blaine nodded.

“Welcome to the club,” said Stone.

“You mean—”

“No, not me. I have a job to do. A most important job.”

“But—”

“I’m speaking,” Stone told him, “of a vast segment of all mankind. I have no idea how many million people.”

“Well, of course, there always were—”

“Wrong again,” said Stone. “It’s the parries, man, the parries. The parries who are not in Fishhook. You couldn’t have traveled almost a thousand miles and—”

“I saw,” said Blaine, a cold shudder building in him, an icelike quality that was neither fear nor hate, but a part of both. “I saw what was happening.”

“It’s a waste,” said Stone. “A terrible waste, both to the parry and the human race. Here are people who are being hunted down, people who are forced into ghettos, people who are reviled and hated — and all the time, within them lies the hope of humankind.

“And I tell you something else. It is not only these intolerant, bigoted, ignorant savages who think of themselves as normal human beings who are to blame for the situation. It is Fishhook itself; Fishhook which must bear part of the blame. For Fishhook has institutionalized paranormal kinetics for its own selfish and particular purpose. It has taken care, most excellent care, of those parries like you and I, handpicking us to carry on their work. But they’ve turned their face against the others. They have given not a sign that they might care what might happen to them. All they’d have to do is stretch out their hand and yet they fail to do it and they leave the other parries in the position of wild animals running in the woods.”

“They are afraid—”

“They just don’t give a damn,” said Stone. “The situation as it stands suits them to the ground. Fishhook started as a human crusade. It has turned into one of the greatest monopolies the world has ever known — a monopoly that is unhampered by a single line of regulation or restriction, except as they may choose to impose upon themselves.”

“I am hungry,” Harriet announced.

Stone paid her no attention. He leaned forward in his chair.

“There are millions of these outcasts,” he declared. “Untrained. Persecuted when they should be given all encouragement. They have abilities at this very moment that mankind, also at this very moment, needs most desperately. They have untrained and latent talents that would prove, if exercised, greater than anything that Fishhook ever has attained.

“There was a time when there was a need for Fishhook. No matter what may happen, no matter what event, the world owes Fishhook more than it ever can repay. But the time has come when we no longer have any need of Fishhook. Fishhook today, so long as it ignores the parries who are not within its fold, has become a brake upon the advancement of the human race. The utilization of PK must no longer remain a monopoly of Fishhook.”

“But there is this terrible prejudice,” Blaine pointed out. “This blind intolerance—”

“Granted,” Stone told him, “and part of it was earned. PK was abused and used, most shamefully used for selfish and ignoble reasons. It was taken and forced into the pattern of the old world that now is dead. And for that reason the parries have a guilt complex. Under this present persecution and their own deep-rooted sense of guilt they cannot operate effectively, either for their own good or for the benefit of humanity. But there is no question that if they could operate openly and effectively, without the pressure of public censure, they could do far more than Fishhook, as it now is constituted, ever can accomplish. And if they were allowed to do this, if they could only be allowed to show that non-Fishhook PK could operate for human betterment, then they’d become accepted and instead of censure would have support and encouragement, and in that day, Shep, Man would have taken a great step forward.

“But we must show the world that PK is a human ability and not a Fishhook ability. And furthermore — if this could be done, then the entire human race would return to sanity and would regain its old-time self-respect.”

“You’re talking in terms,” Blaine told him, “of cultural evolution. It is a process that will take some time. In the end, of course, it may work out naturally — another hundred years.”

“We can’t wait!” cried Stone.

“There were the old religious controversies,” Blaine pointed out. “War between Protestant and Catholic, between Islam and Christianity. And where is it all now? There was the old battle between the Communist dictatorships and the democracies . . .”

“Fishhook helped with that. Fishhook became a powerful third force.”

“Something always helps,” said Blaine. “There can be no end to hope. Conditions and events become so ordered that the quarrel of yesterday becomes an academic problem for historians to chew on.”

“A hundred years,” said Stone. “You’d wait a hundred years?”

“You won’t have to,” Harriet told him. “You have it started now. And Shep will be a help.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Shep,” said Stone, “please listen.”

“I am listening,” said Blaine, and the shudder was growing in him once again, and the sense of alienness, for there was danger here.

“I have made a start,” said Stone. “I have a group of parries — call them underground, call them cadre, call them committee — a group of parries who are working out preliminary plans and tactics for certain experiments and investigations that will demonstrate the effective action which the free, non-Fishhook parries can contribute to their fellow men. . . .”

“Pierre!” exclaimed Blaine, looking at Harriet.

She nodded.

“And this is what you had in mind from the very start. At Charline’s party you said old pal, old friend . . .”

“Is it so bad?” she asked.

“No, I don’t suppose it is.”

“Would you have gone along,” she asked, “if you’d known of it?”

“I don’t know. Harriet, I honestly don’t know.”

Stone rose from his chair and walked the step or two to Blaine. He put out both his hands and dropped them on Blaine’s shoulders. His fingers tightened hard.

“Shep,” he said, solemnly. “Shep, this is important. This is necessary work. Fishhook can’t be the only contact Man has with the stars. One part of the human race cannot be free of earth and the rest remain earthbound.”

In the dim light of the room his eyes had lost their hardness. They became mystical, with the shine of unshed tears.

His voice was soft when he spoke again. “There are certain stars,” he said, almost whispering, as if he might be talking to himself, “that men must visit. To know what heights the human race can reach. To save their very souls.”

Harriet was busily gathering up her handbag and her gloves.

“I don’t care,” she announced. “I am going out to eat. I am simply starved. You two coming with me?”

“Yes,” said Blaine, “I’ll go.”

Then suddenly remembered.

She caught the thought and laughed softly.

“It’ll be on us,” she said. “Let us say in part payment for the times you fed the both of us.”

“No need to be,” said Stone. “He’s already on the payroll. He’s got himself a job. How about it, Shep?”

Blaine said nothing.

“Shep, are you with me? I need you. I can’t do without you. You’re the difference I need.”

“I am with you,” Blaine said simply.

“Well, now,” said Harriet, “since that is settled, let us go and eat.”

“You two go along,” said Stone. “I’ll hold the fort.”

“But, Godfrey—”

“I’ve got some thinking that I have to do. A problem or two. . . .”

“Come along,” Harriet said to Blaine. “He wants to sit and think.”

Puzzled, Blaine went along with her.