Time is the Simplest Thing

by Clifford Simak

  “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.

  THIRTY

  He sat beneath a lone tree that stood on a lesser spur of one of the great bluffs and stared out across the river. A flock of mallards came winging down the valley, a black line against the sky above the eastern hills.

  There had been a day, he thought, when this season of the year the sky had been blackened by the flights that came down from the north, scooting before the first boisterous outriders of the winter storms. But today there were few of them — shot out, starved out by the drying up of areas which had been their nesting places.

  And once this very land had teemed with buffalo and there had been beaver for the taking in almost every stream. Now the buffalo were gone and almost all the beaver.

  Man had wiped them out, all three of them, the wild fowl, the buffalo, the beaver. And many other things besides.

  He sat there thinking of Man’s capacity for the wiping out of species — sometimes in hate or fear, at other times for the simple love of gain.

  And this, he knew, was what was about to happen in large measure to the parries if Finn’s plan were carried out. Back there in Hamilton they would do their best, of course, but would it be enough? They had thirty-six hours in which to put together a vast network of warning. They could cut down the incidents, but could they call them off entirely? It seemed impossible.

  Although, he told himself, he should be the last to worry, for they had thrown him out; they had run him off. His own people, in a town that felt like home, and they had run him off.

  He leaned over and fastened the straps of the knapsack in which Jackson had packed the food. He lifted and set it and the canteen close beside him.

  To the south he could see the distant chimney smoke of Hamilton and even in his half-anger at being thrown out, he seemed to feel again that strange sense of home which he had encountered as he walked its streets. Over the world there must be many such villages as that — ghettos of this latter-day, where paranormal people lived as quietly and as inconspicuously as was possible. They were the ones who huddled in the corners of the earth, waiting for the day, if it ever came, when their children or their children’s children might be free to walk abroad, equals of the people who still were only normal.

  In those villages, he wondered, how much ability and genius might be lying barren, ability and genius that the world could use but would never know because of the intolerance and hate which was held against the very people who were least qualified as the targets of it.

  And the pity of it was that such hate and such intolerance would never have been born, could never have existed, had it not been for men like Finn — the bigots and the egomaniacs; the harsh, stern Puritans; the little men who felt the need of power to lift them from their smallness.

  There was little moderation in humanity, he thought. It either was for you or it was against you. There was little middle ground.
r />   Take science, for example. Science had failed in the dream of space, and science was a bum. And yet, men of science still worked as they had always worked, for the benefit of all humanity. So long as Man might exist, there would be need of science. In Fishhook there were corps of scientists working on the discoveries and the problems that stemmed from the galaxy — and yet science, in the minds of the masses, was a has-been and a heel.

  But it was time to go, he told himself. There was no use staying on. There was no use thinking. He must be moving on, for there was nothing else to do. He had sounded the warning and that was all the men of Hamilton had allowed.

  He’d go up to Pierre and he’d ask for Harriet at the café with the elk horns nailed above the door. Perhaps he’d find some of Stone’s men and they might find a place for him.

  He rose and slung the knapsack and canteen from one shoulder. He stepped out from the tree.

  Behind him there was a sudden rustle and he swung around, short hairs rising on his neck.

  The girl was settling to earth, feet just above the grass, graceful as a bird, beautiful as morning.

  Blaine stood watching, caught up in her beauty, for this was the first time that he’d really seen her. Once before he’d seen her in the pale slash of light from the headlamps of the truck, and once again last night, but for no more than a minute, in a dimly lighted room.

  Her feet touched ground and she came toward him.

  “I just found out,” she said. “I think that it is shameful. After all, you came to help us. . . .”

  “It’s O.K.,” Blaine told her. “I don’t deny it hurts, but I can see their reasoning.”

  “They’ve worked so hard,” she said, “to keep us quiet, away from all attention. They have tried to make a decent life. They can’t take any chances.”

  “I know,” said Blaine. “I’ve seen some who weren’t able to make a decent life.”

  “Us young folks are a worry to them. We shouldn’t go out halloweening, but there’s nothing we can do. We have to stay at home so much. And we don’t do it often.”

  “I’m glad you came out that night,” Blaine told her. “If I hadn’t known of you, Harriet and I would have been trapped with Stone dead upon the floor. . . .”

  “We did what we could for Mr. Stone. We had to hurry and we couldn’t be too formal. But everyone turned out. He’s buried on the hill.”

  “Your father told me,”

  “We couldn’t put up a marker and we couldn’t make a mound. We cut the sod and put it back exactly as it was before. No one would ever know. But all of us have the place tattooed on our minds.”

  “Stone and I were friends from long ago.”

  “In Fishhook?”

  Blaine nodded.

  “Tell me about Fishhook, Mr. Blaine.”

  “The name is Shep.”

  “Shep, then. Tell me.”

  “It is a big place and a tall place (the towers on the hill, the plazas and the walks, the trees and mighty buildings, the stores and shops and dives, the people . . . )

  Shep, why don’t they let us come?

  Let you come?

  There were some of us who wrote them and they sent application blanks. Just application blanks, that’s all. But we filled them out and mailed them. And we never heard.

  There are thousands who want to get into Fishhook.

  Then why don’t they let us come? Why not take all of us? A Fishhook reservation. Where all the little frightened people can have some peace at last.

  He didn’t answer. He closed his mind to her.

  Shep! Shep, what’s wrong? Something that I said?

  Listen, Anita. Fishhook doesn’t want you people. Fishhook isn’t what you think it is. It has changed. It’s become a corporation.

  But, we have always . . .

  I know. I KNOW. I KNOW. It has been the promised land. It has been the ultimate solution. The never-never land. But it’s not like that at all. It is a counting house. It figures loss and profit. Oh, sure, it will help the world; it will advance mankind. It’s theoretically, and even actually, the greatest thing that ever happened. But it has no kindness in it, no kinship with the other paranormals. If we want that promised land, we’ll have to work it out ourselves. We have to fight our own fight, like stopping Finn and his Project Halloween. . . .

  That’s what I came to tell you, really. It isn’t working out.

  The telephoning . . .

  They let two calls get through. Detroit and Chicago. Then we tried New York and the operator couldn’t get New York. Can you imagine that — couldn’t get New York. We tried Denver and the line was out of order. So we got scared and quit. . . .

  Quit! You can’t quit!

  We’re using long tellies. We have a few of them. But it’s hard to reach their contacts. There is little use for distance telepathy and it’s not practiced much.

  Blaine stood in a daze.

  Couldn’t get New York! Line to Denver out of order!

  It was impossible that Finn should have such complete control.

  Not complete control, Anita told him. But people spotted in strategic situations. For example, he probably could sabotage the world’s entire communications network. And he has people all the time watching and monitoring settlements like ours. We don’t make one long-distance call a month. When three came through in fifteen minutes, Finn’s people knew there was something wrong, so they isolated us.

  Blaine slid the knapsack and canteen off his shoulder, lowered them to the ground.

  “I’m going back,” he said.

  “It would do no good. You couldn’t do a thing we aren’t doing now.”

  “Of course,” said Blaine. “You’re very probably right. There is one chance, however, if I can get to Pierre in time . . .”

  “Pierre was where Stone lived?”

  “Why, yes. You knew of Stone?”

  “Heard of him. That was all. A sort of parry Robin Hood. He was working for us.”

  “If I could contact his organization, and I think I can . . .”

  “The woman lives there, too?”

  “You mean Harriet. She’s the one who can put me in contact with Stone’s group. But she may not be there. I don’t know where she is.”

  “If you could wait till night, a few of us could fly you up there. It’s too dangerous in the daytime. There are too many people, even in a place like this.”

  “It can’t be more than thirty miles or so. I can walk it.”

  “The river would be easier. Can you handle a canoe?”

  “Many years ago. I think I still know how.”

  “Safer, too,” Anita said. “There’s not much traffic on the river. My cousin has a canoe, just upriver from the town. I’ll show you where it is.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The storm sneaked in. There was no warning of it except for the gradual graying of the day. At noon the slow-moving clouds blotted out the sun and by three o’clock the sky was closed in, horizon to horizon, by a fleecy grayness that seemed less cloud than the curdling of the sky itself.

  Blaine bent to his paddle, driving furiously to eat up the miles. It had been years since he had used a paddle, years since he had done anything approaching strenuous labor. His arms became stiff and numb, and his shoulders ached, and across the upper back a steel band had settled down and was tightening with every stroke he took. His hands seemed one vast blister.

  But he did not slow his strokes nor the power behind them, for every minute counted. When he got to Pierre, he knew, he might be unable to locate immediately the group of parries who had worked with Stone, and even if he found them they might refuse to help him. They might want to confirm his identity, they might want to check his story, they might quite rightly suspect him as a spy for Finn. If Harriet were there, she could vouch for him, although he was not sure what her status with the group might be nor what her word was worth. Nor was he even sure that she would be there.

  But it was a last, long chance. It was the final hop
e he had and he could not shirk it. He must get to Pierre, he must find the group, he must make them understand the urgency of the situation.

  For if he failed, it spelled the end of Hamilton and of all the other Hamiltons that might be in the world. And it meant as well the end for the other parries who were not in the Hamiltons, but who lived out precarious, careful lives in the midst of normal neighbors.

  Not all of them, of course, would die. But all, or nearly all, would be scattered to the winds, to hide in whatever social and economic nooks and crannies they might be able to devise. It would mean that the parries would lose on a world-wide basis whatever tacit accommodations or imperfect understandings they had been able to establish with their normal neighbors. It would mean another generation of slowly coming back, of regaining, item after painful item, what they would have lost. It would mean, perhaps, another fifty years to ride out the storm of rage, to await the growth of another generation’s tolerance.

  And in the long picture that stretched ahead, Blaine could see no sign of help — of either sympathy or assistance. For Fishhook, the one place that could help, simply would not care. He had gained at least that much understanding of the situation from his contact with Kirby Rand.

  The thought left the taste of bitter ashes in his mind, for it took away the last comfort that he had in all the world — the memory of his days in Fishhook. He had loved Fishhook; he had fought against his fleeing from it; he had regretted that he’d left it; at times he’d wondered if he should not have stayed. But now he knew that he had stayed too long, that perhaps he never should have joined it — for his place was here, out here in the bitter world of the other parries. In them, he realized, lay the hope of developing paranormal kinetics to their full capacity.

  They were the misfits of the world, the outcasts, for they deviated from the norm of humanity as established through all of history. Yet it was this very deviation which made them the hope of all mankind. Ordinary human beings — the kind of human beings who had brought the race this far — were not enough today. The ordinary humans had pushed the culture forward as far as they could push it. It had served its purpose; it had brought the ordinary human as far as he could go. Now the race evolved. Now new abilities had awoke and grown — exactly as the creatures of the Earth had evolved and specialized and then evolved again from that first moment when the first feeble spark of life had come into being in the seething chemical bath of a new and madcap planet.