Time Is the Simplest Thing (29 page)

But there was no place of safety.

Although suddenly there was.

There was a place that he could go. He could go back to that bright-blue living room where the Pinkness dwelled.

But no! That would be no better than staying on the island, for if he went he'd only go in mind and leave his body here. When he returned, the body, more than likely, would be unfit for use.

If he could take his body there, it would be all right.

But he couldn't take his body.

And even if he could, it might be very wrong and very likely deadly.

He tried to recall the data on that distant planet and it had escaped him. So he went digging after it and hauled it up from the deep recesses where he had buried it and regarded it with horror.

He'd not live a minute if he went there in his body!

It was pure and simple poison for his kind of life.

But there must be other places. There would be other places if only he could go there—if all of him could go there.

He sat hunched against the cold and wet and didn't even feel the cold and wet.

He sought the Pinkness in him and he called it and there was no answer.

He called again and yet again and there was no answer. He probed and searched and hunted and he found no sign of it and he knew, almost as if a voice had spoken out and told him, that there was no use of further call or hunting, for he would not find it. He would never find it now, for he was a part of it. The two of them had run together and there was no longer either a Pinkness or a human, but some strange alloy that was the two of them.

To go on hunting for it would be like hunting for himself.

Whatever he would do, he must do himself, by the total power of whatever he'd become.

There were data and ideas, there was knowledge, there was know-how and there was a certain dirtiness that was Lambert Finn.

He went down into his mind, into the shelves and pigeonholes, into the barrels and bins and boxes, into the still incredible junk heap that was as yet unsorted, the tangled billions of odds and ends that had been dumped helter-skelter into him by a helter-skelter being.

He found items that startled him and some that disgusted him and others that were swell ideas, but which in no way applied to his present problem.

And all the time, like some persistent busybody, running underfoot, the mind of Lambert Finn, unabsorbed as yet, perhaps never to be absorbed but always to remain dodging in and out of corners, kept getting in the way.

He pushed it to one side, he shoved it from his path, he swept it under rugs and he kept on searching—but the dirty thoughts and concepts and ideas, the thoughts of Finn, the unraveling subject matter of that core of raging horror from Finn's nightmare of a planet, still kept popping up.

And as, for the hundredth time, he swept the dirtiness away, he caught a hint of what he wanted and went scrabbling after it—scrabbling after it through all the obscenity and evil of that core of writhing horror which he had wrested from Finn's mind. For it was there he found it—not in the bright array of junk he'd inherited from the Pinkness, but in the mass of garbage he had stole away from Finn.

It was an alien knowledge and a crooked, slimy knowledge, and he knew it had its origin on the planet that had sent Finn home a maniac and as he held it in his mental hands and saw the way it worked, how simply it worked, how logical the concepts, he grasped at least a corner of the guilt and fear which had sent Finn in raging hate up and down the land.

For with this kind of know-how the stars lay open, physically open, to all the life in the universe. And to Finn's unbalanced mind that could mean one thing only—that Earth lay open, too. And most specifically that it lay open to the planet which had held the knowledge. Not thinking of how other races might make use of it, not recognizing it as a tool the human race could use to its benefit, he'd seen it simply as a bridge between the place he'd found and the planet he called home. And he had fought with all he had to pull the old home planet back to its former smallness, to break its contact with the stars, to starve and strangle Fishhook by wiping out the parries who in the future might be drafted or invited to carry on the work of Fishhook.

For Finn had reasoned, Blaine thought, with Finn's reasoning an open book before him, that if Earth stayed obscure and small and attracted no attention, the universe would pass it by and it would then be safe.

But however that might be, he held within his mind the technique to go in body to the stars—and a way to save his life.

But now he must find a planet where he could safely go—a planet which would not poison him or drown him or crush him, a place where he could live.

He dipped again into his mind and there, hauled from the junk heap and neatly catalogued, were thousands of planets the Pinkness at one time had visited.

He searched and found a hundred different kinds of planets and each one deadly to unprotected human life. And the horror grew—that with a way of going, he could find no planet soon enough where it would be safe to go.

The howling of the storm intruded on him, breaking through the fierce concentration of his search, and he knew that he was cold—far colder than he'd known. He tried to move a leg and could barely move it. The wind shrieked at him, mocking, as it went fleeing down the river and in between the gusts of wind he could hear the dry, rattling sound of hard snow pellets shotgunning through the willows.

He retreated from the wind and snow and cold, from the shrieking and the rattle—and there was the planet, the one he had been seeking.

He checked the data twice and it was satisfactory. He tattooed the co-ordinates. He got the picture in his mind. Then slowly, piece by piece, he fed in the long-hop method—and the sun was warm.

He was lying on his face and beneath him was grass and the smell of grass and earth. The howling of the storm was gone and there was no rattle in the willows.

He rolled over and sat up.

He held his breath at what he saw.

He was in paradise!

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 than 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?”