Time is the Simplest Thing

TWENTY-SIX

A group of people were standing on the hotel steps, looking at the fire, which roared into the nighttime sky just two blocks away. They paid Blaine no notice. There was no sign of police.

“Some more reefer business,” said one man to another.

The other nodded. “You wonder how their minds work,” he said. “They’ll go and trade there in the daytime, then sneak back and burn the place at night.”

“I swear to God,” said the first man, “I don’t see why Fishhook put up with it. They needn’t simply stand and take it.”

“Fishhook doesn’t care,” the other told him. “I spent five years in Fishhook. I tell you, the place is weird.”

Newsmen, Blaine told himself. A hotel crammed full of newsmen come to cover what Finn would say tomorrow. He looked at the man who had spent five years in Fishhook, but he did not recognize him.

Blaine went up the steps and into the empty lobby. He jammed his fists into his jacket pockets so that no one could spot the bruised and bloody knuckles.

The hotel was an old one and its lobby furnishings, he judged, had not been changed for years. The place was faded and old-fashioned and it had the faint, sour smell of many people who had lived short hours beneath its roof.

A few people sat here and there, reading papers or simply sitting and staring into space, with the bored look of waiting imprinted on their faces.

Blaine glanced at the clock above the desk and it was 11:30.

He went on past the desk, heading for the elevator and the stairs beyond.

“Shep!”

Blaine spun around.

A man had heaved himself out of a huge leather chair and was lumbering across the lobby toward him.

Blaine waited until the man came up and all the time there were little insect feet running on his spine.

The man stuck out his hand.

Blaine took his right hand from his pocket and showed it to him.

“Fell down,” he said. “Stumbled in the dark.”

The man looked at the hand. “You better get that washed up,” he said.

“That’s what I intend to do.”

“You know me, don’t you?” the man demanded. “Bob Collins. Met you a couple of times in Fishhook. Down at the Red Ghost Bar.”

“Yes, of course,” Blaine said, uncomfortably. “I know you now. You slipped my mind at first. How are you?”

“Getting along all right. Sore that they pulled me out of Fishhook, but you get all sorts of breaks, mostly lousy, in this newspaper racket.”

“You’re out here to cover Finn?”

Collins nodded. “How about yourself?”

“I’m going up to see him.”

“You’ll be lucky if you get to see him. He up in 210. Got a big tough bruiser sitting just outside his door.”

“I think he’ll see me.”

Collins cocked his head. “Heard you took it on the lam. Just grapevine stuff.”

“You heard it right,” said Blaine.

“You don’t look so good,” said Collins. “Don’t be offended, but I got an extra buck or two . . .”

Blaine laughed.

“A drink, perhaps?”

“No. I must hurry and see Finn.”

“You with him?”

“Well, not exactly . . .”

“Look, Shep, we were good pals back there in Fishhook. Can you give me what you know? Anything at all. Do a good job on this one, they might send me back to Fishhook. There’s nothing I want worse.”

Blaine shook his head.

“Look, Shep, there are all sorts of rumors. There was a truck went off the road down by the river. There was something in that truck, something that was terribly important to Finn. He leaked it to the press. He’d have a sensational announcement to the press. He had something he wanted us to see. There’s a rumor it’s a star machine. Tell me, Shep, could it be a star machine? No one knows for sure.”

“I don’t know a thing.”

Collins moved closer, his voice dropping to a husky whisper. “This is big, Shep. If Finn can nail it down. He thinks he has hold of something that will blow the parries — every single parry, the whole concept of PK — clear out of the water. You know he’s worked for that for years. In a rather hateful way, of course, but he has worked for it for years. He’s preached hate up and down the land. He’s a first-class rabble-rouser. He needs just this one to cinch his case. Give him a good one now and the entire world tips to him. Give him that clincher and the world will shut its eyes to the way he did it. They’ll be out howling, out after parry blood.”

“You forgot that I’m a parry.”

“So was Lambert Finn — at one time.”

“There’s too much hate,” Blaine said wearily. “There are too many derogatory labels. The reformers call the paranormal people parries, and the parries call the reformers reefers. And you don’t give a damn. You don’t care which way it goes. You wouldn’t go out and hunt someone to his death. But you’ll write about it. You’ll spread the blood across the page. And you don’t care where it comes from, just so it is blood.”

“For the love of God, Shep . . .”

“So I will give you something. You can say that Finn hasn’t anything to show, not a word to say. You can say that he is scared. You can say he stubbed his toe. . . .”

“Shep, you’re kidding me!”

“He won’t dare show you what he’s got.”

“What is it that he’s got?”

“Something that, if he showed it, would make him out a fool. I tell you, he won’t dare to show it. Tomorrow morning Lambert Finn will be the most frightened man the world has ever known.”

“I can’t write that. You know I can’t. . . .”

“Tomorrow noon,” Blaine told him, “everyone will be writing it. If you start right now, you can catch the last morning editions. You’ll scoop the world — if you’ve got the guts to do it.”

“You’re giving me straight dope? You’re—”

“Make up your mind,” said Blaine. “It’s true, every word of it. It is up to you. Now I’ve got to get along.”

Collins hesitated. “Thanks, Shep,” he said. “Thanks an awful lot.”

Blaine left him standing there, went past the elevator and turned up the stairs.

He came to the second floor and there, at the end of the left-hand corridor a man sat in a chair tilted back against the wall.

Blaine paced purposefully down the corridor. As he came closer, the guard tilted forward in his chair and came to his feet.

He put his hand out against Blaine’s chest.

“Just a minute, mister.”

“It’s urgent I see Finn.”

“He ain’t seeing no one, mister.”

“You’ll give him a message?”

“Not at this hour, I won’t.”

“Tell him I’m from Stone.”

“But Stone—”

“Just tell him I’m from Stone.”

The man stood undecided. Then he let his arm drop.

“You wait right here,” he said. “I’ll go in and ask him. Don’t try no funny stuff.”

“That’s all right. I’ll wait.”

He waited, wondering just how smart he was to wait. In the half-dark, rancid corridor he felt the ancient doubt. Maybe, he told himself, he should simply turn around and walk rapidly away.

The man came out.

“Stand still,” he commanded. “I’ve got to run you down.”

Expert hands went over Blaine, seeking knife or gun.

The man nodded, satisfied. “You’re clean,” he said. “You can go on in. I’ll be right outside the door.”

“I understand,” Blaine told him.

The guard opened the door, and Blaine went through it. The room was furnished as a living room. Beyond it was a bedroom.

There was a desk across the room, and a man stood behind the desk. He was clad in funeral black with a white scarf at this throat and he was tall. His face was long and bony and made one think of a winter-gaunted horse, but there was a hard, stern purpose to him that was somehow frightening.

Blaine walked steadily forward until he reached the desk.

“You are Finn,” he said.

“Lambert Finn,” said the man in a hollow voice, the tone of an accomplished orator who never can quite stop being an orator even when at rest.

Blaine brought his hands out of his pockets and rested his knuckles on the desk. He saw Finn looking at the blood and dirt.

“Your name,” said Finn, “is Shepherd Blaine and I know all about you.”

“Including that someday I intend to kill you?”

“Including that,” said Finn. “Or at least a suspicion of it.”

“But not tonight,” said Blaine, “because I want to see your face tomorrow. I want to see if you can take it as well as dish it out.”

“And that’s why you came to see me? That’s what you have to tell me?”

“It’s a funny thing,” Blaine told him, “but at this particular moment, I can think of no other reason. I actually can’t tell why I bothered to come up.”

“To make a bargain, maybe?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. There’s nothing that I want that you can give me.”

“Perhaps not, Mr. Blaine, but you have something that I want. Something for which I’d pay most handsomely.”

Blaine stared at him, not answering.

“You were in on the deal with the star machine,” said Finn. “You could provide the aims and motives. You could connect up the pieces. You could tell the story. It would be good evidence.”

Blaine chuckled at him. “You had me once,” he said. “You let me get away.”

“It was that sniveling doctor,” Finn said ferociously. “He was concerned there would be a rumpus and his hospital would somehow get bad publicity.”

“You should pick your people better, Finn.”

Finn growled. “You haven’t answered me.”

“About the deal, you mean? It would come high. It would come awfully high.”

“I am prepared to pay,” said Finn. “And you need the money. You are running naked with Fishhook at your heels.”

“Just an hour ago,” Blaine told him, “Fishhook had me trussed up for the kill.”

“So you got away,” Finn said, nodding. “Maybe the next time, too. And the time after that as well. But Fishhook never quits. As the situation stands, you haven’t got a chance.”

“Me especially, you mean? Or just anyone? How about yourself?”

“You especially,” said Finn. “You know a Harriet Quimby?”

“Very well,” said Blaine.

“She,” Finn said, levelly, “is a Fishhook spy.”

“You’re staring mad!” yelled Blaine.

“Stop and think of it,” said Finn. “I think you will agree.”

They stood looking at one another across the space of desk, and the silence was a live thing, a third presence in the room.

The red thought rose up inside Blaine’s brain: Why not kill him now?

For the killing would come easy. He was an easy man to hate. Not on principle alone, but personally, clear down to his guts.

All one had to do was think of the hate that rode throughout the land. All one had to do was close one’s eyes and see the slowly turning body, half masked by the leaves; the deserted camp with the propped-up quilts for shelters and the fish for dinner laid out in the pan; the flame-scarred chimney stark against the sky.

He half lifted his hands off the table, then put them down again.

Then he did a thing quite involuntarily, without thinking of it, without a second’s planning or an instant’s thought. And even as he did it, he knew it was not he who did it, but the other one, the lurker in the skull.

For he could not have done it. He could not have thought of doing it. No human being could.

Blaine said, very calmly: “I trade with you my mind.”