Time is the Simplest Thing

TWENTY-NINE

Hamilton dreamed beside the river. It had a certain hazy quality and the mellowness of old river towns, for all that it was new. Above it rose the tawny hills and below the hills the checkered fields that came up to the town. Lazy morning smoke rose from the chimneys, and each picketed fence had in its corner a clump of hollyhocks.

“It looks a peaceful place,” said Father Flanagan. “You know what you are doing?”

Blaine nodded. “And you, Father? What about yourself?”

“There is an abbey down the river. I will be welcome there.”

“And I’ll see you again.”

“Perhaps. I’ll be going back to my border town. I’ll be a lonely picket on the borderland of Fishhook.”

“Watching for others who may be coming through?”

The priest nodded. He cut the motor’s speed and turned the boat for shore. It grated gently on the sand and pebbles, and Blaine jumped out of it.

Father Flanagan raised his face toward the western sky and sniffed. “There is weather making,” he declared, looking like a hound-dog snuffling a cold trail. “I can smell the edge of it.”

Blaine walked back through water that came up to his ankles and held out his hand.

“Thanks for the lift,” he said. “It would have been tough walking. And it saved a lot of time.”

“Good-by, my son. God go with you.”

Blaine pushed the boat out into the water. The priest speeded up the motor and swept the boat around. Blaine stood watching as he headed down the stream. Father Flanagan lifted his hand in a last farewell, and Blaine waved back.

Then he waded from the water and took the path up to the village.

He came up to the street and he knew it to be home. Not his home, not the home he once had known, no home he’d ever dreamed of, but home for all the world. It had the peace and surety, the calmness of the spirit, the feel of mental comfort — the sort of place a man could settle down and live in, merely counting off the days, taking each day as it came and the fullness of it, without a thought of future.

There was no one on the street, which was flanked by trim, neat houses, but he could feel them looking at him from out the windows of each house — not spying on him or suspicious of him, but watching with a kindly interest.

A dog came from one of the yards — a sad and lovely hound — and went along with him, walking by his side in good companionship.

He came to a cross-street and to the left was a small group of business houses. A group of men were sitting on the steps of what he took to be a general store.

He and the hound turned up the street and walked until they came up to the group. The men sat silently and looked at him.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Can any of you tell me where I can find a man named Andrews?”

They were silent for another heartbeat, then one of them said: “I’m Andrews.”

“I want to talk with you,” said Blaine.

“Sit down,” said Andrews, “and talk to all of us.”

“My name is Shepherd Blaine.”

“We know who you are,” said Andrews. “We knew when the boat pulled into shore.”

“Yes, of course,” said Blaine. “I should have realized.”

“This man,” Andrews said, “is Thomas Jackson and over there is Johnson Carter and the other one of us is Ernie Ellis.”

“I am glad,” said Blaine, “to know each one of you.”

“Sit down,” said Thomas Jackson. “You have come to tell us something.”

Jackson moved over to make room for him, and Blaine sat down between him and Andrews.

“First of all,” said Blaine, “maybe I should tell you that I’m a fugitive from Fishhook.”

“We know a little of you,” Andrews told him. “My daughter met you several nights ago. You were with a man named Riley. Then only last night we brought a dead friend of yours here—”

“He’s buried on the hill,” said Jackson. “We held a rather hasty funeral for him, but at least a funeral. You see, he was not unknown to us.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Blaine.

“Last night, also,” said Andrews, “there was some sort of ruckus going on in Belmont—”

“We’re not too happy with such goings-on,” said Carter, interrupting. “We’re too apt to become involved.”

“I’m sorry if that’s the case,” Blaine told them. “I’m afraid I’m bringing you more trouble. You know of a man named Finn.”

They nodded.

“I talked with Finn last night. I found out something from him. Something he had no intention, I might add, of ever telling me.”

They waited.

“Tomorrow night is Halloween,” said Blaine. “It’s set to happen then.”

He saw them stiffen and went quickly on: “Somehow or other — I’m not just sure how he managed to achieve it — Finn has set up a sort of feeble underground among the paranormal people. None of them, naturally, know that he’s behind it. They view it as a sort of pseudopatriotic movement, a sort of cultural protest movement. Not too successful or extensive, but it would not have to be extensive. All that he needs is to create a few incidents — a few horrible examples. For that is how he works, using horrible examples to whip up the public frenzy.

“And this underground of his, working through the teenage paranormals, has arranged a series of PK demonstrations on the night of Halloween. A chance, they’ve been told, to demonstrate paranormal powers. A chance, perhaps, to pay off some old scores. God knows, there must be old scores a-plenty that need some paying off.”

He stopped and looked around at their stricken faces. “You realize what a dozen of these demonstrations — a dozen in the entire world, given the kind of publicity Finn intends to give them — would do to the imagination of the normal population.”

“It would not be a dozen,” Andrews said, quietly. “Worldwide, it might be a hundred or even several hundreds. The morning after they’d sweep us off the earth.”

Carter leaned forward, intently. “How did you find this out?” he asked. “Finn would not have told you unless you were in with him.”

“I traded minds with him,” said Blaine. “It’s a technique I picked up among the stars. I gave him a pattern of my mind and took in exchange a duplicate of his. A sort of carbon copy business. I can’t explain it to you, but it can be done.”

“Finn,” said Andrews, “won’t thank you for this. Yours must be a most disturbing mind to have inside his head.”

“He was quite upset,” said Blaine.

“These kids,” said Carter. “They would make like witches. They would burst open doors. They would whisk cars to another place. Small buildings would be upset and demolished. Voices and wailings would be heard.”

“That’s the idea,” Blaine told him. “Just like an old-fashioned, hell-raising Halloween. But to the victims it would not be merely mischief. It would be all the forces of the ancient darkness let loose upon the world. It would be goblins and ghosts and werewolves. On its surface it would be bad enough, but in the imagination of the victims it would grow out of all proportion. There would be, by morning, guts strung along the fence and men with their throats slashed ragged and girl children carried off. Not here, not where it was being told, but always somewhere else. And the people would believe. They’d believe everything they heard.”

“But still,” said Jackson, “you can’t criticize the teen-age parries too harshly if they should want to do this. I tell you, mister, you can’t imagine what they have been through. Snubbed and ostracized. Here, at the beginning of their lives, they find bars raised against them, fingers leveled at them—”

“I know,” Blaine said, “but even so you have got to stop it. There must be a way to stop it. You can use telepathy on the telephone. Somehow or other—”

“A simple device,” said Andrews. “Although ingenious. Developed about two years ago.”

“Use it then,” said Blaine. “Call everyone you can. Urge the people you talk with to pass the warning on and the ones they talk with to pass the warning on. Set up a chain of communication—”

Andrews shook his head. “We couldn’t reach them all.”

“You can try,” Blaine shouted.

“We will try, of course,” said Andrews. “We’ll do everything we can. Don’t think that we’re ungrateful. Very far from that. We thank you. We never can repay you. But—”

“But what?”

“You can’t stay here,” said Jackson. “Finn is hunting you. Fishhook, too, perhaps. And they’ll all come here to look. They’ll figure you’d run to cover here.”

“My God,” yelled Blaine, “I came here—”

“We are sorry,” Andrews told him. “We know how you must feel. We could try to hide you out, but if you were found—”

“All right, then. You’ll let me have a car.”

Andrews shook his head. “Too dangerous. Finn would watch the roads. And they could trace the registration. . . .”

“What then? The hills?”

Andrews nodded.

“You’ll give me food?”

Jackson got up. “I’ll get you grub,” he said.

“And you can come back,” said Andrews. “When this all blows over, we’ll be glad to have you back.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Blaine.