Time is the Simplest Thing

THIRTY-TWO

The sun had passed the midday mark and was slanting down the western sky when Blaine came striding down the bluff above the town of Hamilton, walking in the slush and mud after the first storm of the season.

Here he was, he thought, almost too late again — not quite soon enough. For when the sun slipped behind the horizon All Hallows Eve would start.

He wondered how many parry centers the folks of Hamilton had been able to contact. And it was possible, he told himself, that they had done better than anyone could hope. Perhaps they had been lucky. Perhaps they’d hit the jackpot.

And he thought of another thing, of the old priest saying: The finger of God stretched out to touch your heart.

Someday, he thought, the world would look back and wonder at the madness of this day — at the blindness and the folly and the sheer intolerance. Someday there would be vindication. Someday sanity. Someday the Church in Rome would recognize the paranormal as no practicer of witchcraft, but as the natural development of the human race in the grace of God. Someday there would be no social or economic barriers between the parry and the normal — if by that time there should be any normals left. Someday there’d be no need of Fishhook. Even, perhaps, someday there’d be no need of Earth.

For he had found the answer. Failing to reach Pierre, he still had found the answer. He had been forced (by the finger of God, perhaps?) — he had been forced to find the answer.

It was a better answer than the one that Stone had sought. It was a better technique than even Fishhook had. For it did away entirely with the concept of machines. It made a human whole and the master of himself and of the universe.

He strode on down the bluff and struck the trail that ran into Hamilton. In the sky a few scattered, tattered clouds still flew across the valley, the rearguard of the storm. Pools of melt stood along the token roadway and despite the brightness of the sun the wind out of the west had not lost its teeth.

He plodded up the street that led to the center of the town and from a block or two away he could see them waiting for him in the square before the stores — not just a few as had been the case before, but a crowd of them. More than likely, he figured, here was the most of Hamilton.

He walked across the square and the crowd was quiet. He flicked a look at it, searching for Anita, but he did not see her.

On the steps four men waited, the same four he had met before.

He stopped before them.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

“We heard you coming,” Andrews told him.

“I didn’t get to Pierre,” said Blaine. “I tried to get there to find some help for us. But the storm caught me on the river.

Jackson said: “They blocked us on the phone. But we used long tellies. We got through to some of the other groups and they have spread the word. We don’t know how far.”

“Nor how well,” said Andrews.

“Your tellies still can contact these groups?” asked Blaine.

Andrews nodded.

Jackson said: “Finn’s men never showed. And it has us worried. Finn ran into trouble. . . .”

“They should have showed,” said Andrews. “They should have turned us inside out in their hunt for you.”

“Perhaps they don’t want to find me.”

“Perhaps,” Jackson told him coldly, “you’re not what you say you are.”

Blaine’s temper flared. “To hell with you,” he shouted. “I damn near died for you. Go on and save yourselves.”

He turned on his heel and walked away, with the anger surging in him.

It was not his fight. Not personally his fight. No more his fight than any one of them. But he had made it his. Because of Stone, because of Rand and Harriet, because of the priest who’d hounded him across half the continent, he had tried to make a fight of it. And perhaps, as well, because of something undefinable, unknown to himself, unsuspected in himself — some crazy idealism, some deep-rooted sense of justice, some basic aversion to bullies and bigots and reformers.

He had come to this village with a gift — he had hurried here so he could give it to them. And they had stood and questioned his integrity and purpose.

To hell with them, he said.

He had been pushed far enough. He would be pushed no further.

There was just one thing left that was worth the doing and he would go and do it and from that moment on, he told himself, there would be nothing more that mattered, for him or anyone.

“Shep!”

He kept on walking.

“Shep!”

He stopped and turned around.

Anita was walking from the crowd.

“No,” he said.

“But they are not the only ones,” she said. “There are the rest of us. We will listen to you.”

And she was right, of course.

There were the rest of them.

Anita and all the rest of them. The women and the children and those other men who were not in authority. For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person.

And in this a parry or a community of parries was no different from a normal person or a community of normal persons. Paranormal ability, after all, did not change the person. It merely gave him a chance to become a better person.

“You failed,” Anita said. “We could not expect that you would succeed. You tried and that’s enough.”

He took a step toward her.

“But I didn’t fail,” he said.

They were coming toward him now, all of them, a mass of people walking slowly and silently toward him. And in front of them walked Anita Andrews.

She reached him and stood in front of him and looked up into his face.

She kept her voice low. “Where have you been?” she asked. “Some of us went out and scouted on the river. We located the canoe.”

He reached out an arm and caught her and swung her to his side and held her tight against him.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “in just a little while. What about these people?”

“They are scared,” she said. “They’ll grab at any hope.”

The crowd came to a halt a dozen feet away, and a man in front said: “You’re the man from Fishhook.”

Blaine nodded. “I was from Fishhook. I’m not with them any longer.”

“Like Finn?”

“Like Finn,” admitted Blaine.

“Like Stone, too,” Anita said. “Stone was from Fishhook, too.”

“You are afraid,” said Blaine. “You’re afraid of me and Finn and of the entire world. But I’ve found a place where you’ll never need to think of fear again. I’ve found a new world for you and if you want it, it is yours.”

“What kind of a world, mister? One of the alien worlds?”

“A world like the best of Earth,” said Blaine. “I’ve just come from there. . . .”

“But you came walking down the bluff. We saw you walking down the bluff. . . .”

“Shut up, you fools!” Anita screamed. “Give him a chance to tell you.”

“I found a way,” said Blaine. “I stole a way, call it what you will — for one to go to the stars in both mind and body. I went out to the stars last night. I came back this morning. No machine is needed. All you need is a little understanding.”

“But how can we tell—”

“You can’t,” said Blaine. “You gamble, that is all.”

“But even Fishhook, mister—”

“Last night,” Blaine said, slowly, “Fishhook became obsolete. We don’t need Fishhook any more. We can go anywhere we wish. We don’t need machines. We just need our minds. And that is the goal of all paranormal research. The machines were never more than just a crutch to help our limping mind. Now we can throw away that crutch. We have no need for it.”

A gaunt-faced woman pushed through the crowd.

“Let’s cut out all this talk,” she said. “You say you found a planet?”

“That I did.”

“And you can take us there?”

“No one needs to take you. You can go yourself.”

“You are one of us, young man. You have an honest face. You wouldn’t lie to us?”

Blaine smiled. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Then tell us how to go.”

Someone cried out: “Can we take some stuff with us?”

Blaine shook his head. “Not much. A mother could take her baby if she held it in her arms. You could pack a knapsack and strap it on your back. You could sling a bag across your shoulder. You could take along a pitchfork and an ax and another tool or two.”

A man stirred out of line and said: “We’ll have to go about this right. We’ll have to figure out what we want to take. We’ll need food and garden seed and some clothes and tools. . . .”

“You can come back for more,” said Blaine, “any time you like. There’s nothing hard about it.”

“Well,” said the gaunt-faced woman, “let’s not be standing here. Let us get about it. Why don’t you tell us, sir?”

“There’s just one thing,” said Blaine. “You have long tellies here?”

“I’m one of them,” the woman told him. “Me and Myrtle over there and Jim back in the crowd and—”

“You’ll have to pass the word along. To as many as you can. And the ones you pass it on to will have to pass it on to others. We have to open the gates to as many as we can.”

The woman nodded. “You just tell it to us.”

There was a murmur in the crowd and they all were moving forward, flowing in on Blaine and Anita to form a ring around them.

“All right,” said Blaine, “catch on.”

He felt them catching on, gently closing in upon his mind, almost as if they were becoming one with him.

But that wasn’t it at all, he thought. He was becoming one with them. Here in the circle the many minds had become one mind. There was one big mind alone and it was warm and human and full of loving kindness. There was a hint of springtime lilac and the smell of nighttime river fog stealing up the land and the sense of autumn color when the hills were painted purple by an Indian summer. There was the crackling of a wood fire burning on the hearth, and the dog lay there sleeping by the fire and the croon of wind as it crawled along the eaves. There was a sense of home and friends, of good mornings and good nights, of the neighbor across the way and the sound of church bells ringing.

He could have stayed there, floating, but he swept it all away.

Here are the co-ordinates of the planet you are going to, he told them.

He gave them the co-ordinates and repeated them again so there’d be no mistake.

And here is how you do it.

He brought out the slimy alien knowledge and held it for them to see until they became accustomed to it, then step by step he showed them the technique and the logic, although there really was no need, for once one had seen the body of the knowledge, the technique and the logic became self-evident.

Then he repeated it again so there’d be no misunderstanding.

The minds drew back from him, and he stood alone with Anita at his side.

He saw them staring at him as they drew away.

What’s the matter now? he asked Anita.

She shuddered. It was horrible.

Naturally. But I’ve seen worse.

And that was it, of course. He’d seen worse, but these people never had. They’d lived all their life on Earth; they knew nothing but the Earth. They had never really touched an alien concept, and that was all this concept was. It was not really as slimy as it seemed. It was only alien. There were a lot of alien things that could make one’s hair stand up on end while in their proper alien context they were fairly ordinary.

Will they use it? Blaine asked.

The gaunt-faced woman said to him: I overheard that, young man. It’s dirty, but we’ll use it. What else is there for us to do?

You can stay here.

We’ll use it, said the woman.

And you’ll pass it along?

We’ll do the best we can.

They began to move away. They were uneasy and embarrassed as if someone had told a particularly dirty joke at the church’s ice-cream social.

And you? Blaine asked Anita.

She turned slowly from his side to face him. You had to do it, Shep. There was no other way. You never realized how it would seem to them.

No, I never did. I’ve lived so long with alien things. I’m part alien, really. I’m not entirely human.

Hush, she said. Hush, I know just what you are.

Are you sure, Anita?

Very sure, she said.

He drew her to him and held her tight against him for a moment, then he held her from him and peered into her face, seeing the tears that were just behind the smile inside her eyes.

“I have to leave,” he told her. “There’s one thing else to do.”

“Lambert Finn?”

He nodded.

“But you can’t,” she cried. “You can’t!”

“Not what you think,” he told her. “Although, God knows, I’d like to. I would like to kill him. Up to this very moment, that was what I had intended.”

“But is it safe — going back like this?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see. I can buy some time. I’m the only man who can. Finn’s afraid of me.”

“You’ll need a car?”

“If you can find me one.”

“We’ll be leaving, probably shortly after dark. You’ll be back by then?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You’ll come back to go with us? You’ll come back to lead us?”

“Anita, I can’t promise. Don’t try to make me promise.”

“If we’re gone, you’ll follow?”

He only shook his head.

He could give no answer.