Time Is the Simplest Thing (15 page)

The Pinkness settled down. You could sense its settling down—smugly, primly getting set for a long and satisfactory exchange of ideas and, perhaps, an argument.

It may be so
, it said,
but it's very primitive. It goes back to the ooze. There are better ways. There even is a point where there is no further need of this improvement that you speak of
.

But, first of all
, he asked,
are you satisfied?

Satisfied?

Well, you're an improved thing yourself. An expanded thing. You are part yourself and you are partly me
.

And you are partly me as well
.

The Pinkness seemed to chuckle.
But there are just the two of you—yourself and me—and I am so many things I cannot begin to tell you. I have done a lot of visiting and I've picked up a lot of things, including many minds, and some of them, I don't mind telling you, were hardly worth the trading. But do you know, for all the visiting I've done, almost no one ever visits me. I cannot tell you how I appreciate this visit. There was a being once who came to visit me quite often, but it was so long ago it's a bit hard to recall. By the way, you measure time, don't you—surface time, that is?

Blaine told him how humans measure time.

Hm, now, let's see
, the creature said, doing rapid mental calculation,
that would make it about ten thousand of your years ago
.

That this creature came to visit you?

That is right
, the Pinkness said.
You are the first since then. And you came visiting me. You didn't wait for me to visit you. And you had that machine
.…

How come
, Blaine asked,
you had to ask me about our count of time? You had it all. You traded minds with me. You have everything I know
.

Of course
, the Pinkness mumbled.
Of course I had it. But I hadn't dug it out. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how cluttered up I am
.

And that was true, Blaine thought. Even with just one extra mind, he was cluttered up. He wondered.…

Yes, of course
, the Pinkness told him.
You'll get it straightened out in time. It takes a little while. You'll become one mind, not two. You'll get together. You'll make a team. You like it this way, don't you?

It's been a little rough, this mirror business
.

I'm not bent on causing trouble
, said the Pinkness.
I only do the best I can. So I make mistakes. So I fix it up. I take the mirror off, I cancel it. O.K.?

O.K
., said Blaine.

I sit here
, said the Pinkness,
and I go visiting. Without stirring from this place, I go anyplace I wish and you'd be surprised how few minds I find that I'd care to trade for
.

In ten thousand years, however, you'd pick up a lot of them
.

Ten thousand years
, said the creature, startled.
Ten thousand years, my friend, is only yesterday
.

He sat there, mumbling, reaching back and back and not reaching the beginning and he finally gave it up.

And there are so few of them
, he complained,
that can handle a second mind. I must be careful of them. There are a lot of them that think they are possessed. Some of these would go insane if I traded with them. You, perhaps, can understand
.

Readily
, said Blaine.

Come
, said the Pinkness,
and sit down here beside me
.

I'm scarcely
, Blaine explained,
in a condition to do much sitting
.

Oh, yes, I see
, the creature said.
I should have thought of that. Well, then, move over closer. You came for a visit, I presume
.

Naturally
, said Blaine, not knowing what to say.

Then
, said the creature grimly,
leave us start to visit
.

Certainly
, said Blaine, moving somewhat closer.

Now, where shall I start?
the creature asked.
There are so many places and so many times and so many different creatures. It always is a problem. I suppose it comes because of a desire for neatness, an orderliness of mind. The thought persists to plague me that if I could put it all together I might arrive at something of significance. You would not mind, I presume, if I should tell you about those strange creatures that I ran into out at the edge of the galaxy
.

Not at all
, said Blaine.

They are rather extraordinary
, said the Pinkness,
in that they did not develop machines as your culture did, but became, in effect, machines themselves.…

Sitting there in the bright blue room, with the alien stars flaming overhead, with the faint, far-off sound of the raging desert wind a whisper in the room, the Pinkness talked—not only of the machine entities, but of many others. Of the insect tribes that piled up over endless centuries huge reserves of food for which they had no need, slaving on an endless treadmill of a blind economic mania. Of the race that made their art forms the basis of a weird religion. Of the listening posts manned by garrisons of a galactic empire that had long since been forgotten by all except the garrisons themselves. Of the fantastic and complicated sexual arrangements of yet another race of beings who, faced with the massive difficulties of procreation, thought of little else. Of planets that never had known life but rolled along their courses as gaunt and raw and naked as the day they had been formed. And of other planets that were a boiling brew pot of chemical reactions which stretched the mind to think on, let alone to understand, and of how these chemical reactions of themselves gave rise to an unstable, ephemeral sort of sentience that was life one moment and just failed of life another.

This—and yet a great deal more.

Blaine, listening, realized the true fantastic measure of this creature which he had stumbled on—an apparently deathless thing, which had no memory of its beginning, no concept of an end; a creature with a roving mind that had mentally explored, over billions of years, millions of stars and planets for millions of light years, in this present galaxy and in some of the neighbor ones; a mind that had assembled a gigantic grab box of assorted information, but information which it had made no effort to put to any use. That it, more than likely, had no idea of how to put to use, yet troubled by a vague idea that this store of knowledge should not be lying fallow.

The sort of creature that could sit in the sun for endless time and spin eccentric yarns of all that it had seen.

And for the human race, thought Blaine, here squatted an encyclopedia of galactic knowledge, here lounged an atlas that had mapped uncounted cubic light years. Here was the sort of creature that the tribe of Man could use. Here was a running off of mouth that would pay human dividends—dividends from an entity which seemed without emotion, other than a certain sense of friendliness—an entity that, perhaps, in years of armchair observation, had had all emotions, if any had existed, worn away until they were so much dust—who had not used any of the knowledge it had gained, but had not been the loser. For in all its observation, in its galactic window-peeping, it had gained a massive tolerance and an understanding, not of its own nature, not of human nature, but of every nature, an understanding of life itself, of sentience and intelligence. And a sympathy of all motives and all ethics, and of each ambition, no matter how distorted in the eyes of other life.

And all of this, as well, Blaine realized with a start, was likewise stored in the mind of one human being, of one Shepherd Blaine, if he could only separate it and classify and store it and then could dig it out and put it to proper use.

Listening, Blaine lost all sense of time, lost all knowing of what he was or where he was or why he might be there, listening as a boy might listen to some stupendous tale spun by an ancient mariner from far and unknown land.

The room became familiar and the Pinkness was a friend and the stars were no longer alien and the far-off howling of the desert wind was a cradle song that he had always known.

It was a long time before he realized he was listening only to the wind and that the stories of far away and long ago had ceased.

He stirred, almost sleepily, and the Pinkness said:
That was a nice visit that we had. I think it was the best that I have ever had
.

There is one thing
, said Blaine.
One question—

If it is the shield
, the Pinkness said,
you needn't worry. I took it away. There is nothing to betray you
.

It wasn't that
, said Blaine.
It was time. I—that is, the two of us—have some control of time. Twice it saved my life
.…

It is there
, the Pinkness said.
The understanding's in your mind. You only have to find it
.

But, time—

Time
, the creature said,
is the simplest thing there is. I'll tell you
…

SEVENTEEN

Blaine lay for a long time, soaking in the feel of body, for now he had a body. He could feel the pressure on it, he could sense the movement of the air as it touched the skin, knew the hot damp of perspiration prickle along his arms and face and chest.

He was no longer in the blue room, for there he had no body and there was no longer the far-off sound of the desert wind. There was, instead, a regular rasping sound that had a slobber in it. And there was a smell, an astringent smell, an aggressively antiseptic odor that filled not only the nostrils, but the entire body.

He let his eyelids come up slowly against possible surprise, set to snap them shut again if there should be a need. But there was only whiteness, plain and unrelieved. There was no more than the whiteness of a ceiling.

His head was on a pillow and there was a sheet beneath him and he was dressed in some sort of garment that had a scratchiness.

He moved his head and he saw the other bed and upon it lay a mummy.

Time, the creature on that other world had said, time is the simplest thing there is. And it had said that it would tell him, but it hadn't told him, for he hadn't stayed to hear.

It was like a dream, he thought—thinking back on it, it had the unreal, flat-planed quality of a dream, but it had not been any dream. He had been in the blue room once again and he'd talked with the creature that was its habitant. He had heard it spin its yarns and he still retained within his mind the details of those yarns. There was no fading of the detail as there would have been if it had been a dream.

The mummy lay upon the bed swathed in bandages. There were holes in the bandages for the nostrils and the mouth but no holes for the eyes. And as it breathed it slobbered.

The walls were of the same whiteness as the ceiling, and the floors were covered with ceramic tile and there was a sterility about the place that shrieked its identity.

He was in a hospital room with a slobbering mummy.

Fear moved in on him, a sudden wash of fear, but he lay there quietly while it washed over him. For even in the fear, he knew that he was safe. There was some reason he was safe. There was some reason if he could think of it.

Where had he been? he wondered; where had he been other than the blue room? His mind went tracking back and he remembered where he'd been—in the willow thicket in the gully beyond the edge of town.

There were footsteps in the hall outside, and a man with a white jacket came into the room.

The man stopped inside the door and stood there looking at him.

“So you've come around at last,” the doctor said. “Just how do you feel?”

“Not too bad,” said Blaine, and actually he felt fine. There didn't seem to be a thing the matter. “Where did you pick me up?”

The doctor did not answer. He asked another question. “Did anything like this ever happen to you before?”

“Like what?”

“Blacking out,” the doctor. “Falling into coma.”

Blaine rocked his head from side to side upon the pillow. “Not that I recall.”

“Almost,” the doctor said, “as if you were the victim of a spell.”

Blaine laughed. “Witchcraft, doctor?”

The doctor grimaced. “No, I don't imagine so. But one never knows. The patient sometimes thinks so.”

He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I'm Dr. Wetmore,” he told Blaine. “You've been here two days. Some boys were hunting rabbits east of town. They found you. You had crawled underneath some willows. They thought that you were dead.”

“And so you hauled me in.”

“The police did. They went out and got you.”

“And what is wrong with me?”

Wetmore shook his head. “I don't know.”

“I haven't any money. I can't pay you, Doctor.”

“That,” the doctor told him, “is not of any moment.”

He sat there, looking at him. “There is one thing, however. There were no papers on you. Do you remember who you are?”

“Sure. I'm Shepherd Blaine.”

“And you live where?”

“Nowhere,” said Blaine. “I just wander around.”

“How did you get to this town?”

“I don't somehow recall.”

He sat up in bed. “Look, Doctor, how about getting out of here? I'm taking up a bed.”

The doctor shook his head. “I'd like you to stick around. There are several tests—”

“It'll be a lot of trouble.”

“I've never run across a case like yours,” the doctor said. “You'd be doing me a favor. There was nothing wrong with you. Nothing organically, that is. Your heartbeat was retarded. Your breathing a little shallow. Your temperature off a point or two. But otherwise all right, except that you were out. No way of waking you.”

Blaine jerked his head toward the mummy. “He's in bad shape, isn't he?”