Time is the Simplest Thing

FOUR

Blaine walked through the massive, ornate entrance that fronted on the plaza and under ordinary circumstance he would have stopped there for a moment to soak in this best part of the day. The street lamps were soft blobs of light, and the fronds were rustling in the evening breeze. The strollers on the walks seemed disembodied shadows, and the cars went sliding past in a sort of breathless haste, but quietly, very quietly. And over all of it hung the magic haze of an autumn night.

Tonight he did not stop. There was no time to stop.

Eight minutes now. Eight little lousy minutes.

Five blocks to get his car out of the parking lot and he didn’t have the time. He couldn’t take the chance. He had to leave the car.

And there was something else — there was Kirby Rand. Why, on this of all nights, had Rand popped out his door and asked him in to have a drink?

There was nothing that he could put his finger on, but he felt a vague disquiet at his talk with Rand. It was almost as if the man had known he was stealing time from him, as if he might have sensed that there was something wrong.

But all of that was past, Blaine told himself. It had been hard luck, of course, but it was not disastrous. In fact, there might even be some advantage to it. If he had got his car, Fishhook would have known exactly where to look for him. But forced to stay within the city, he could vanish in a matter of ten minutes.

He strode swiftly down the walk and turned in a direction away from the parking lot.

Give me ten minutes more, he told himself, almost as if it were a prayer. With a ten-minute start, there were a dozen places he could hide himself — hide himself to gain a little breathing space, to do a little thinking and to make some plans. For now, without a car, he simply had no plans.

He’d get those ten minutes, he was sure, if he only could be so lucky as to meet no one who might recognize him.

He felt the terror welling up as he strode along, a terror rising like a froth foaming in his skull. And it was not his terror; it was not human terror. It was abysmal and black, a screaming, clawing terror that had its origin in a mind that could hide no longer from the horrors of an alien planet, that could no longer huddle inside an alien brain, that finally found it unbearable to face up to a frightening situation that was made almost unendurable by a total lack of background.

Blaine fought against the terror, teeth gritted in his mind, knowing with one thin, undulled edge of understanding that it was not himself who had tripped the terror, but this other, this lurker in the brain.

And realized, even as he thought it, that he could scarcely separate the two of them — that they were bound inexorably together, that they shared a common fate.

He started to run but forced himself to stop with the last ounce of resolution in him. For he must not run; he must in no wise attract attention to himself.

He lurched off the walk and collided with the trunk of a massive tree, and his hands went out to grasp and hug it, as if by the mere act of contact with something earthly he might gain some strength.

He stood there against the tree, hanging on as best he could — and hanging on was all. Slowly the terror began to drain back into some inner recess of his skull, crawling back into its hole, hiding piteously again.

It’s all right, he told the thing. You stay right where you are. Don’t worry. Leave everything to me. I will handle this.

It had tried to get away. It had tried its best to burst free of where it was and, having failed, now was pulling back into the one safe corner of the pen in which it found itself.

No more of this, Blaine thought. I can’t afford another one like this. If another came, he knew, he could not stand against it. He could not keep himself from running from the terror, slobbering and screaming in horror as he ran. And that would be the end for him.

He let loose of the tree and stood stiff and straight beside it, forcing himself to stand stiff and straight against his weakness and his rubber legs. He felt the chill dampness of the perspiration which had started out on him and he was panting like a man who had run a race.

How could he run and hide, he asked himself; how could he get away with this monkey on his back? Himself alone was bad enough. He could not hope to do it if he had to drag along a frightened, whimpering alien.

But there was no way to lose the alien, no way he knew of at the moment to shake it loose of him. He was stuck with it and he must get along with it the best way that he could.

He moved out from the tree and went on down the walk, but more slowly and less surely, trying to still the shaking in him, trying to pump some strength into his wobbly legs. And through it all, he suddenly realized that he was ravenous with hunger. The wonder was, he told himself, that he had not sooner been aware of it, for except for the glass of milk, he had had no food for more than thirty hours. Rest — rest that had amounted to a deep, unbroken sleep — but not a bite of food.

The cars went sliding past, whispering on their airjets, with the soft, low murmur of the nuclear engines like an undertone.

One pulled to the curb just ahead of him, and a head stuck out.

“Shep,” said the head, “how lucky! I was hoping I would find you.”

Blaine stood in panic for an instant and he felt the alien terror rising once again, but he crammed it back into its corner with every shred of mental power he had.

He made his voice calm and fought to keep it even.

“Freddy,” he said. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen you.” For it was Freddy Bates, man of no apparent occupation, although it was vaguely understood that he represented someone or other in this place where almost every other person was a lobbyist or representative or petty diplomat or undercover agent.

Freddy opened the door.

“Hop in,” he said. “We’re going to a party.”

And this might be it, thought Blaine. This might be the way to start where he was going. It was better, certainly, than anything he had in mind. Fishhook would never in a million years think to find him at a party. And another thing: A party would be an easy place to slip away from. There would be so many people that none of them would notice when or where one of them might go. There would be, he was almost certain, at least one car with the key left carelessly in its ignition lock. There would be food — and he needed food.

“Come on,” said Freddy. “It is one of Charline’s parties.”

Blaine slid into the car and sank into the seat. The door hissed shut, and Freddy swung the car into a traffic lane.

“I told Charline,” said Freddy, settling down to chatter, “that a party simply could not be a party without a soul from Fishhook. I volunteered to go out and snare a Fishhook personage.”

“You goofed,” Blaine told him shortly. “I am no personage.”

“Except,” said Freddy, “you travelers have such horrendous tales to tell.”

“You know,” said Blaine, “that we never tell them.”

Freddy clicked his tongue. “Secrecy,” he said.

“You’re wrong,” said Blaine. “It’s rules and regulations.”

“Of course. And that’s the reason rumor is a rampant wildfire in this town. Let something happen in the afternoon up here on the hill and by evening it is being told in the finest detail in the lowest dives.”

“But usually not correct.”

“Perhaps not in its more lurid and exact description, but at least in principle.”

Blaine did not answer. He settled back in the seat and turned his head toward the window, watching the lighted streets slide past and above the streets the massive, terraced blocks of buildings that were Fishhook. And marveled at the unfailing wonder of this sight which after all the years never failed to thrill him. Knowing as he thought it that it was not the sight itself, for there were grander in the world, but the fabulous significance which fell like a mantle on the city.

For here, he thought, in fact, if not in name, was the capital of Earth. Here lay the hope and greatness of the future, here was the human link with other worlds deep in outer space.

And he was leaving it.

Incredible as it seemed, with all his love of it and all his devotion to it and all his faith in it, he was running from it like a frightened rabbit.

“What are you guys going to do with all of it?” asked Freddy.

“All of what?”

“All the knowledge, all the secrets, all the concepts that you are raking in.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Blaine.

“Regiments of scientists,” said Freddy, “working happily away. Corps of technologists doping out new angles. How far ahead of the rest of us are you — a million years or so?”

“You’re talking to the wrong man,” said Blaine. “I don’t know a thing. I just do my job. And if you’re needling me, you should know that I don’t needle.”

“I’m sorry,” said Freddy. “It’s an obsession with me.”

“You and a million other people. Bitching at Fishhook is a worldwide pastime.”

“Look at it my way,” said Freddy, earnestly. “I’m sitting on the outside. I’m not even looking in. Here I see this great monstrosity, this human paragon, this superhuman project, and I feel an envy of everyone who’s in it and a sense of not belonging and distinctly second-rate. Do you wonder the world hates Fishhook’s guts?”

“Do they?”

“Shep,” said Freddy, solemnly, “you should get around.”

“No particular need. I hear enough of it without going anywhere. My question was: Do they hate Fishhook really?”

“I think they do,” said Freddy. “Maybe not right here. All the talk in this town is mostly fashionable. But get out in the provinces. They really hate it there.”

The streets now were not so closely hemmed nor the lights so bright. There were fewer business places and the residences were thinning out. The traffic had diminished.

“Who’ll be at Charline’s?” asked Blaine.

“Oh, the usual crowd,” said Freddy. “Plus the usual zoo. She’s the crazy sort. Without any inhibitions, scarcely with a social sense. You might bump into almost anyone.”

“Yes, I know,” said Blaine.

The thing stirred inside his brain, almost a sleepy stir.

It’s all right, Blaine told it. Just settle down and snooze. We have got it made. We are on our way.

Freddy swung the car off the main road and followed a secondary that went winding up a canyon. The air took on a chill. In the dark outside one could hear the trees talking back and forth and there was the smell of pine.

The car turned an abrupt curve, and the house was shining on a bench above — a modernistic cliff dwelling plastered in the canyon’s wall like a swallow’s nest.

“Well,” said Freddy, joyously, “here we finally are.”