Time Is the Simplest Thing (7 page)

The mob moved closer, circling, still cautious, and mute; all its murmur quieted, all its hate locked tight behind the savage masks.

A foot clicked sharply on the sidewalk, then another foot, and still another one—the rugged, steady sound of someone's stolid walking.

The footsteps came closer, and Blaine turned his eyes a second to catch out of the corner of them the sight of a tall, angular, almost cadaverous man who strode along deliberately, for all the world as if he were out for a morning stroll.

The man reached Blaine and stood to one side of him and then he turned and faced the mob. He never said a word; he just stayed standing there. But the crowd came to a halt and stood there in the street in a dreadful quietness.

Then a man said: “Good morning to you, Sheriff.”

The sheriff didn't stir; he didn't say a word.

“Them is parries,” said the man.

“Who says so?” asked the sheriff.

“Old Sara, she says so.”

The sheriff looked at the crone: “How about it, Sara?”

“Tom is right,” Old Sara screeched. “That one there, he has a funny mind. It bounces back at you.”

“And the woman?” asked the sheriff.

“She is with him, ain't she?”

“I am ashamed of you,” the sheriff said, as if they all were naughty children. “I have a mind to run you in, every one of you.”

“But them is parries!” yelled a stricken voice. “You know we don't allow no parries here.”

“Now, I tell you what,” the sheriff said. “You all get back to business. I'll take care of this.”

“The both of them?” a voice asked.

“Why, I don't know,” the sheriff said. “The lady ain't no parry. I just kind of figured we'd run her out of town and that would be enough.”

He said to Harriet: “Are you with this man?”

“And I'm staying with him!”

No!
said Blaine. (
A sign for silence, finger to the lips
.)

Fast, hoping that no one would catch it, for in a town like this even a telepath might be in for trouble.

But the warning must be sounded.

“That your car across the street?” the sheriff asked.

Harriet shot a questioning glance at Blaine.

“Yes, it is,” she said.

“Well, I tell you, miss. You just trot over to it and get out of here. The folks will let you through.”

“But I don't intend—”

Blaine said: “You better do it, Harriet.”

She hesitated.

“Go ahead,” he said.

She stepped slowly off the sidewalk, then turned back.

“I'll be seeing you,” she said to Blaine.

She glanced with contempt at the sheriff. “Cossack,” she declared.

The sheriff didn't mind. He'd never heard the term.

“Beat it, lady,” he said, and his voice was almost kindly.

The crowd parted to let her through, but buzzed angrily. She reached the car and turned to wave at Blaine. Then she got into the seat and started the motor, gunned the jets and swung the car sharply out into the street. The crowd fled, shrieking, tumbling over one another to get out of the way, blinded by the screaming dust that was spun up by the jets.

The sheriff watched with monumental calm as the car roared down the street.

“You see that, sheriff!” roared an outraged victim. “Why don't you run her in?”

“Served you right,” the sheriff said. “You started all of this. Here I was getting ready for a restful day and you got me all stirred up.”

He didn't look stirred up.

The protesting crowd pushed toward the sidewalk, arguing violently.

The sheriff waved his hands, as if he were shooing chickens.

“Get along with you,” he told them. “You have had your fun. Now I got to get to work. I got this guy to jail.”

He turned to Blaine. “Come along with me,” he said.

They walked down the street together toward the courthouse.

“You ought to have known better,” said the sheriff. “This town is hell on parries.”

“No way to tell,” said Blaine. “There wasn't any sign.”

“Blew down a year or two ago,” the sheriff told him. “No one had the gumption to set it up again. Really should have a new sign. Old one got pretty rickety. You could hardly read the lettering on it. Sand storms scoured off the paint.”

“What do you intend to do with me?”

The sheriff said: “Not too much, I reckon. Hold you for a while until the folks cool down. For your own protection. As soon as it is safe, I'll get you out of here.”

He was silent for a moment, considering the situation.

“Can't do it right away,” he said. “The boys will be watching mighty close.”

They reached the courthouse and climbed the steps. The sheriff opened the door. “Straight ahead,” he said.

They walked into the sheriff's office, and the sheriff closed the door.

“You know,” said Blaine, “I don't believe you've got the grounds to hold me. What would happen if I just walked out of here?”

“Nothing much, I guess. Not right away, at least. I certainly wouldn't stop you, although I'd argue some. But you wouldn't get out of town. They'd have you in five minutes.”

“I could have left in the car.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Son, I know these people. I was raised with them. I am one of them. I know how far I can go with them and when I've got to stop. I could get the lady off, but not the both of you. You ever see a mob in action?”

Blaine shook his head.

“It ain't a pretty sight.”

“How about this Sara? She's a parry, too.”

“Well, I tell you, friend. Sara has good blood behind her. Fell on evil times, but her family's been here for more than a hundred years. The town just tolerates her.”

“And she's handy as a spotter.”

The sheriff shook his head and chuckled. “There ain't much,” he said, with local pride, “that filters past our Sara. She has a busy time of it, watching all the strangers that come into town.”

“You catch a lot of parries that way?”

“Tolerable,” said the sheriff. “Every now and then. A tolerable number, I would say.”

He motioned at the desk. “Just dump your pockets there. The law says I got to do it. I'll fix up a receipt for you.”

Blaine began digging in his pockets. Billfold, card case, handkerchief, key ring, matches and, finally, the gun.

He lifted it out rather gingerly and laid it with the other stuff.

The sheriff eyed it. “You had that all the time?”

Blaine nodded.

“And you never reached for it?”

“I was too scared to reach for it.”

“You got a permit for it?”

“I don't even own it.”

The sheriff whistled softly through his teeth.

He picked up the gun and broke it. There was the coppery shine of cartridge cases.

The sheriff opened a desk drawer and tossed it in.

“Now,” he said, as if relieved, “I've got something legal I can hold you on.”

He picked up the book of matches and handed them to Blaine.

“You'll want these for smoking.”

Blaine put them in his pocket.

“I could get you cigarettes,” the sheriff said.

“No need,” Blaine told him. “I carry them sometimes, but I don't do much smoking. Usually I wear them out carrying them before I get around to smoking.”

The sheriff lifted a ring of keys off a nail.

“Come along,” he said.

Blaine followed him into a corridor that fronted on a row of cells.

The sheriff unlocked the nearest one, across the corridor from the door.

“You've got it all alone,” he said. “Ran the last one out last night. Boy who came across the border and got himself tanked up. Figured he was as good as white folks.”

Blaine walked into the cell. The sheriff banged and locked the door.

“Anything you want,” he said, with a fine show of hospitality, “just yell out and say so. I'll get it for you.”

EIGHT

It had gone by many names.

Once it had been known as extrasensory perception. And then there had been a time when it had been psionics, psi for short. But first of all it had been magic.

The medicine man, with the oxides that he used for paint, with his knucklebones to rattle in the skull, with his bag of nauseous content, may have practiced it in a clumsy sort of way before the first word had been written—grasping at a principle he did not understand, more than likely not even knowing that he did not understand, not realizing there was anything he ought to understand. And the knowledge was passed on, from hand to inept hand. The witch doctor of the Congo used it, the priests of Egypt knew it, the wise men of Tibet were acquainted with it. And in all these cases it was not wisely used and it was not understood and it got mixed up with a lot of mumbo jumbo and in the days of reason it became discredited and there was scarcely anyone who believed in it.

Out of the days of reason rose a method and a science, and there was no place for magic in the world that science built—for there was no method in it and there was no system in it and it could not be reduced to a formula or equation. So it was suspect and it was outside the pale and it was all stupid foolishness. No man in his right mind would once consider it.

But they called it PK now for paranormal kinetics, which was too long to say. And the ones who had it they called parries and shut them up in jails and did even worse than that.

It was a queer business, once one thought of it—for despite the strange gulf which lay between PK and science, it had taken the orderly mind which science had drummed into the human race to make PK finally work.

And, strange as it might seem, Blaine told himself, it had been necessary that science should come first. For science had to be developed before Man could understand the forces which had freed his mind from the shackles in which they had been bound, before mental energy could be tapped and put to work by those who quite unsuspectingly had always carried with them that power and energy. For even in the study of PK there had been a need for method, and science had been the training ground in which method had developed.

There were those who said that in some distant past two roads had forked for mankind, one of them marked “Magic” and the other “Science,” and that Man had taken the “Science” road and let the “Magic” go. Many of these people then went on to say that Man had made a great mistake in the choosing of the roads. See how far we'd have gone, they said, if we had taken “Magic” at the first beginning.

But they were wrong, Blaine said, talking to himself, for there had never been two roads; there'd only been the one. For Man had had to master science before he could master magic.

Although science had almost defeated magic, had almost driven it into limbo with laughter and with scorn.

And would have driven it had there not been stubborn men who had refused to give up the dream of stars. Men who had been willing to do anything at all, to brave the laughter of the world, to accept derision, if they only could lay hands upon the stars.

He wondered how it must have been in those days when Fishhook had been no more than a feeble hope, a glimmer of the mind, an article of faith. For the little band of hopeful, stubborn men had stood entirely by themselves. When they had asked for help, there had been no help, but only scornful chuckling against such errant foolery.

The press had made a field day of it when they had appeared in Washington to ask financial aid. There had, quite naturally, been no such aid forthcoming, for the government would have naught to do with such a wildcat scheme. If science in all its might and glory had failed to reach the stars, how could there be hope that such as these might do it? So the men had worked alone, except for such pittances as they might be given here and there—a small grant from India, another from the Philippines and a little from Colombia—plus dribbles that came in from metaphysical societies and a few sympathetic donors.

Then finally a country with a heart—Mexico—had invited them to come, had provided money, had set up a study center and a laboratory, had lent encouragement rather than guffaws of laughter.

And almost from that day, Fishhook had become reality, had developed into an institution which did credit not to itself alone, but to the country which had opened up its heart.

And I am a part of it, thought Blaine, sitting in his cell; a part of this virtually secret society, although secret through no fault of its own. Made secret, rather, by the envy and intolerance and the surging superstition of the entire world. Even though I am running from it, even though it be hunting me, I am still a part of it.

He got up from the tiny bunk with its dirty blanket and stood at the window, staring out. He could see the sun-baked street and the scraggly trees staggered on the boulevard and across the street the sad, defeated business houses with a few dilapidated cars parked against the curb, some of them so ancient they were equipped with wheels which in turn were driven by internal combustion engines. Men sat on the steps that led up to the store fronts, chewing tobacco and spitting out onto the sidewalks, creating little pools of sticky amber liquid which looked like old bloodstains. They sat there languidly and chewed and occasionally talked among themselves, not looking at the courthouse, looking nowhere in particular, but being very nonchalant about their deadly loafing.

But they were watching the courthouse, Blaine knew. They were watching him—the man with the mirror in his mind. The mind, Old Sara told the sheriff, that bounces back at you.

And that had been what Kirby Rand had seen, that had been what had tipped him off and set Fishhook on the trail. Which meant that Rand, if he were not a peeper, then certainly was a spotter. Although, Blaine thought, it didn't really matter whether Rand was a peeper or a spotter, for a peeper would have little luck in reading a mind that bounced right back at you.