Time is the Simplest Thing

TWENTY-FIVE

Rand had said “I’ll be seeing you,” when he had shaken hands and stepped into the transo. He had sounded cheerful and very confident. And he’d had a right to sound that way, Blaine thought ruefully, for he’d had it all planned out. He had known exactly what would happen and he’d planned it letter perfect — the one way to apprehend a man you happened to be just a little scared of, not knowing exactly what to expect from him.

Blaine lay on the floor, stretched out, held stretched out and motionless by the encircling robe — except, of course, it was not a robe. It was, more than likely, one of those weird discoveries which Fishhook, for purposes of its own, had found expedient to keep under very careful cover. Foreseeing, no doubt, that certain unique uses might be found for it.

Blaine searched his memory and there was nothing there — nothing that even hinted of a thing like this, some parasitic life, perhaps, which for time on end could lie quiet and easy, making like a robe, but which came to deadly life once it was exposed to something warm and living.

It had him now and within a little while it might start feeding on him, or whatever else it might plan to do with him. There was no use, he knew, to struggle, for at every movement of his body the thing would only close the tighter.

He searched his mind again for a clue to this thing and all at once he found a place — he could see a place — a murky, tumbled planet with tangled forestation and weird residents that flapped and crawled and shambled. It was a place of horror, seen only mistily through the fogs of memory, but the most startling thing about it was that he was fairly certain, even as he dredged it up, he had no such memory. He had never been there and he’d never talked to one who had, although it might have been something he’d picked up from dimensino — from some idle hour of many years before, buried deep within his mind and unsuspected until this very moment.

The picture grew the brighter and the clearer, as if somewhere in his brain someone might be screwing at a lens to get a better picture, and now he could see in remarkable and mind-chilling detail the sort of life that lived within the welter of chaotic jungle. It was horrendous and obscene and it crawled and crept and there was about it a studied, cold ferociousness, the cruelty of the uncaring and unknowing, driven only by a primal hunger and a primal hate.

Blaine lay frozen by the pitlike horror of the place, for it was almost as if he actually were there, as if a part of him lay on this floor before the fireplace while the other half was standing, in all reality, within the loathsome jungle.

He seemed to hear a noise, or this other half of him seemed to hear a noise, and this other half of him looked upward into what might have been a tree, although it was too gnarled, too thorned and too obnoxious to be any proper tree, and looking up, he saw the robe, hanging from a branch, with the shattered diamond dust sparkling in its fur, about to drop upon him.

He screamed, or seemed to scream, and the planet and its denizens faded out, as if the hand within his brain had turned the viewing lens out of proper focus.

He was back, entire, in the land of fireplace and of storeroom, with the transo machine standing in its corner. The door that went into the store was opening, and Grant was coming through.

Grant moved out into the room and eased the door behind him to its closed position. Then he swung around and stood silently, huge, and stolid, staring at the man upon the floor.

“Mr. Blaine,” he said, speaking softly. “Mr. Blaine, are you awake?”

Blaine did not answer.

“Your eyes are open, Mr. Blaine. Is there something wrong with you?”

“Not a thing,” said Blaine. “I was just lying here and thinking.”

“Good thoughts, Mr. Blaine?”

“Very good, indeed.”

Grant moved forward slowly, catfooted, as if he might be stalking something. He reached the table and picked up the bottle. He put it to his mouth and let it gurgle.

He put the bottle down.

“Mr. Blaine, why don’t you get up? We could sit around and talk and have a drink or two. I don’t get to talk to people much. They come here and buy, of course, but they don’t talk to me no more than they just have to.”

“No, thanks,” said Blaine. “I’m quite comfortable.”

Grant moved from the table and sat down in one of the chairs before the fireplace.

“It was a shame,” he said, “you didn’t go back to Fishhook with Mr. Rand. Fishhook is an exciting place to be.”

“You’re quite right,” Blaine told him, replying automatically, not paying much attention.

For now he knew — he knew where he’d got that memory, where he’d picked up the mental picture of that other planet. He had gotten it from the neat stacks of information he’d picked up from the Pinkness. He, himself, of course, had never visited the planet, but the Pinkness had.

And there was more to the memory than just the magic-lantern picture of the place. There was, as well, a file of data about the planet and its life. But disorderly, not yet sorted out, and very hard to get at.

Grant leaned back into his chair, smirking just a little. Grant reached out a hand and tapped his fingers on the robe. It gave forth a sound like a muted drum.

“Well,” he demanded, “how do you like it, Mr. Blaine?”

“I’ll let you know,” Blaine told him, “when I get my hands on you.”

Grant got up from the chair and walked back to the table, following an exaggerated, mocking path around the stretched-out Blaine. He picked up the bottle and had another slug.

“You won’t get your hands on me,” he said, “because in just another minute I’m going to shove you into the transo over there and back you go to Fishhook.”

He took another drink and set the bottle back.

“I don’t know what you done,” he said. “I don’t know why they want you. But I got my orders.”

He half lifted the bottle, then thought better of it. He shoved it back to the center of the table. He walked forward and stood towering over Blaine.

There was another picture, of another planet, and there was a thing that walked along what might have been a road. The thing was nothing such as Blaine had ever seen before. It looked something like a walking cactus, but it was not a cactus and there was every doubt that it was vegetable. But neither the creature nor the road were too significant. What was significant was that following at the creature’s heels, gamboling awkwardly along the could-be road, were a half dozen of the robes.

Hunting dogs, thought Blaine. The cactus was a hunter and these were his hunting dogs. Or he was a trapper and these things were his traps. Robes, domesticated from that other jungle planet, perhaps picked up by some space-going trader, tough enough to survive stellar radiation, and brought to this planet to be bartered for something else of value.

Perhaps, Blaine thought wildly, it was from this very planet that the robe now wrapped about him had been found and taken back to Fishhook.

There was something else pounding in his brain — some sort of phrase, a very alien phrase, perhaps a phrase from the cactus language. It was barbarous in its twisting of the tongue and it made no sense, but as Grant stooped with his hands outstretched to lift him, Blaine shouted out the phrase with all his strength.

And as he shouted, the robe came loose. It no longer held him. Blaine rolled, with a powerful twist of body, against the legs of the man who was bending over him.

Grant went over, face forward on the floor, with a roar of rage. Blaine, clawing his way to his hands and knees, broke free and lunged to his feet out beyond the table.

Grant swarmed off the floor. Blood dripped slowly from his nose where it had struck against the boards. One hand was raw with blood oozing from the knuckles where his hand had scraped.

He took a quick step forward and his face was twisted with a double fear — the fear of a man who could free himself from the clutches of the robe, the fear of having failed his job.

Then he lunged, head lowered, arms outthrust, fingers spread, driving straight for Blaine. He was big and powerful and he was driven by an utter desperation that made him doubly dangerous since he would be careless of any danger to himself.

Blaine pivoted to one side — not quite far enough. One of Grant’s outstretched hands caught at his shoulder, slipped off it, the fingers dragging, clawing wildly, and closing on Blaine’s shirt. The cloth held momentarily throwing Blaine off balance, then the fabric parted and ripped loose with a low-pitched screeching.

Grant swung around, then flung forward once again, a snarl rising in his throat. Blaine, his heels dug into the floor, brought his fist up fast, felt the jolt of it hitting bone and flesh, sensed the shiver that went through Grant’s body as the big man staggered back.

Blaine swung again and yet again, following Grant, blows that started from his knees and landed with an impact that made his arm a dead thing from the elbow down — blows that shook and staggered Grant and drove him back, ruthlessly and relentlessly.

It was not anger that drove Blaine, although there was anger in him, nor fear, nor confidence, but a plain and simple logic that this was his only chance, that he had to finish the man in front of him or himself be finished.

He had gotten in one lucky blow and he must never stop. No rough-and-tumble fighter, he would lose everything he’d gained if he let Grant regain his balance, if he ever gave him a chance to rush him again or land a solid blow.

Grant tottered blindly, hands clawing frantically at the air, groggy with the blows. Deliberately, mercilessly, Blaine aimed at the chin.

The blow smacked hollowly, and Grant’s head snapped back, pivoting to one side. His body became a limp thing without any bone or muscle that folded in upon itself. Grant slumped and hit the floor, lying like a rag doll robbed of its inner strength of sawdust.

Blaine let his arms fall to his side. He felt the stinging of the cuts across his knuckles and the dead, dull ache that went through his punished muscles.

A faint surprise ran through him — that he should have been able to do a thing like this; that he, with his own two fists, should have beaten this big brute of a man into a bloody pulp.

He’d got in the first good blow and that had been nothing but pure and simple luck. And he had found the key that unlocked the robe and had that been a piece of luck as well?

He thought about it and he knew that it had not been luck, that it had been good and solid information plucked from the file of facts dumped into his brain when the creature on that planet five thousand light years distant had traded minds with him. The phrase had been a command to the robe to get its clutches off whatever it had trapped. Sometime in its mental wanderings across unimagined space, the Pinkness had soaked up a wondrous amount of information about the cactus people. And out of this incredible junk heap of miscellaneous facts the terribly discerning brain that belonged to humankind had been able to select the one undistinguished fact which at a given moment had high survival value.

Blaine stood and stared at Grant and there was still no movement in the man.

And what did he do now? Blaine wondered.

He got out of here, of course, as quickly as he could. For in just a little while someone from Fishhook would be stepping from the transo, wondering why he had not been delivered, all neatly trussed and gentle.

He would run again, of course, Blaine told himself with bitterness. Running was the one thing he could do really well. He’d been running now for weeks on end and there seemed no end to it.

Someday, he knew, he would have to stop the running. Somewhere he’d have to make a stand, for the salvation of his self-respect if for no other reason.

But that time had not yet come. Tonight he’d run again, but this time he’d run with purpose. This night he’d gain something for the running.

He turned to get the bottle off the table and as he moved, he bumped into the robe, which was humping slowly on the floor. He kicked it savagely and it skidded weakly, almost wetly, into a lump in the fireplace corner.

Blaine grabbed the bottle in his fist and went across the room to the pile of goods stacked in the warehouse section.

He found a bale of goods and prodded it and it was soft and dry. He poured the contents of the bottle over it, then threw the bottle back into the corner of the room.

Back at the fireplace, he lifted the screen away, found the shovel and scooped up flaming coals. He dumped the coals on top the liquor-wetted goods, then flung the shovel from him and stepped back.

Little blue flames licked along the bale. They spread and grew. They crackled.

It was all right, Blaine knew.

Given five good minutes and the place would be in flames. The warehouse would be an inferno and there’d be nothing that could stop it. The transo would buckle and melt down, and the trail to Fishhook would be closed.

He bent and grasped the collar of Grant’s shirt and tugged him to the door. He opened the door and hauled the man out into the yard, some thirty feet distant from the building.

Grant groaned and tried to get to hands and knees, then collapsed upon the ground again. Blaine bent and tugged him another ten feet along the ground and let loose of him. Grant muttered and thrashed, but he was too beaten to get up.

Blaine walked to the alley and stood for a minute, watching. The windows of the Post were filling very satisfactorily with the red of roaring flames.

Blaine turned and padded softly down the alley.

Now, he told himself, would be a splendid time to make a call on Finn. In just a little while the town would be agog with the burning of the Post and the police much too busy and officious to bother with a man out on the street in violation of the curfew.