Time Is the Simplest Thing (18 page)

“There was a time when there was a need for Fishhook. No matter what may happen, no matter what event, the world owes Fishhook more than it ever can repay. But the time has come when we no longer have any need of Fishhook. Fishhook today, so long as it ignores the parries who are not within its fold, has become a brake upon the advancement of the human race. The utilization of PK must no longer remain a monopoly of Fishhook.”

“But there is this terrible prejudice,” Blaine pointed out. “This blind intolerance—”

“Granted,” Stone told him, “and part of it was earned. PK was abused and used, most shamefully used for selfish and ignoble reasons. It was taken and forced into the pattern of the old world that now is dead. And for that reason the parries have a guilt complex. Under this present persecution and their own deep-rooted sense of guilt they cannot operate effectively, either for their own good or for the benefit of humanity. But there is no question that if they could operate openly and effectively, without the pressure of public censure, they could do far more than Fishhook, as it now is constituted, ever can accomplish. And if they were allowed to do this, if they could only be allowed to show that non-Fishhook PK could operate for human betterment, then they'd become accepted and instead of censure would have support and encouragement, and in that day, Shep, Man would have taken a great step forward.

“But we must show the world that PK is a human ability and not a Fishhook ability. And furthermore—if this could be done, then the entire human race would return to sanity and would regain its old-time self-respect.”

“You're talking in terms,” Blaine told him, “of cultural evolution. It is a process that will take some time. In the end, of course, it may work out naturally—another hundred years.”

“We can't wait!” cried Stone.

“There were the old religious controversies,” Blaine pointed out. “War between Protestant and Catholic, between Islam and Christianity. And where is it all now? There was the old battle between the Communist dictatorships and the democracies …”

“Fishhook helped with that. Fishhook became a powerful third force.”

“Something always helps,” said Blaine. “There can be no end to hope. Conditions and events become so ordered that the quarrel of yesterday becomes an academic problem for historians to chew on.”

“A hundred years,” said Stone. “You'd wait a hundred years?”

“You won't have to,” Harriet told him. “You have it started now. And Shep will be a help.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Shep,” said Stone, “please listen.”

“I am listening,” said Blaine, and the shudder was growing in him once again, and the sense of alienness, for there was danger here.

“I have made a start,” said Stone. “I have a group of parries—call them underground, call them cadre, call them committee—a group of parries who are working out preliminary plans and tactics for certain experiments and investigations that will demonstrate the effective action which the free, non-Fishhook parries can contribute to their fellow men.…”

“Pierre!” exclaimed Blaine, looking at Harriet.

She nodded.

“And this is what you had in mind from the very start. At Charline's party you said old pal, old friend …”

“Is it so bad?” she asked.

“No, I don't suppose it is.”

“Would you have gone along,” she asked, “if you'd known of it?”

“I don't know. Harriet, I honestly don't know.”

Stone rose from his chair and walked the step or two to Blaine. He put out both his hands and dropped them on Blaine's shoulders. His fingers tightened hard.

“Shep,” he said, solemnly. “Shep, this is important. This is necessary work. Fishhook can't be the only contact Man has with the stars. One part of the human race cannot be free of earth and the rest remain earthbound.”

In the dim light of the room his eyes had lost their hardness. They became mystical, with the shine of unshed tears.

His voice was soft when he spoke again. “There are certain stars,” he said, almost whispering, as if he might be talking to himself, “that men must visit. To know what heights the human race can reach. To save their very souls.”

Harriet was busily gathering up her handbag and her gloves.

“I don't care,” she announced. “I am going out to eat. I am simply starved. You two coming with me?”

“Yes,” said Blaine, “I'll go.”

Then suddenly remembered.

She caught the thought and laughed softly.

“It'll be on us,” she said. “Let us say in part payment for the times you fed the both of us.”

“No need to be,” said Stone. “He's already on the payroll. He's got himself a job. How about it, Shep?”

Blaine said nothing.

“Shep, are you with me? I need you. I can't do without you. You're the difference I need.”

“I am with you,” Blaine said simply.

“Well, now,” said Harriet, “since that is settled, let us go and eat.”

“You two go along,” said Stone. “I'll hold the fort.”

“But, Godfrey—”

“I've got some thinking that I have to do. A problem or two.…”

“Come along,” Harriet said to Blaine. “He wants to sit and think.”

Puzzled, Blaine went along with her.

TWENTY

Harriet settled herself resolutely and comfortably in her chair as they waited for their orders.

“Now tell me all about it,” she demanded. “What happened in that town? And what has happened since? How did you get in that hospital room?”

“Later,” Blaine objected. “There'll be time later on to tell you all of that. First tell me what is wrong with Godfrey.”

“You mean him staying back in the room to think?”

“Yes, that. But there is more than that. This strange obsession of his. And the look in his eyes. The way he talks, about men going to the stars to save their souls. He is like an old-time hermit who has seen a vision.”

“He has,” said Harriet. “That is exactly it.”

Blaine stared.

“It happened on that last exploratory trip,” said Harriet. “He came back touched. He had seen something that had shaken him.”

“I know,” said Blaine. “There are things out there …”

“Horrible, you mean.”

“Horrible, sure. That is part of it. Incomprehensible is a better word. Processes and motives and mores that are absolutely impossible in the light of human knowledge and morality. Things that make no sense at all, that you can't figure out. A stone wall so far as human understanding is concerned. And it scares you. You have no point of orientation. You stand utterly alone, surrounded by nothing that was ever of your world.”

“And yet you stand up to it?”

“I always did,” said Blaine. “It takes a certain state of mind—a state of mind that Fishhook drills into you everlastingly.”

“With Godfrey it was different. It was something that he understood and recognized. Perhaps he recognized it just a bit too well. It was goodness.”

“Goodness!”

“A flimsy word,” said Harriet. “A pantywaist of a word. A sloppy kind of word, but the only word that fits.”

“Goodness,” Blaine said again, as if he were rolling the word about, examining it for texture and for color.

“A place,” said Harriet, “where there was no greed, no hate, no driving personal ambition to foster either hate or greed. A perfect place with a perfect race. A social paradise.”

“I don't see …”

“Think a minute and you will. Have you ever seen a thing, an object, a painting, a piece of statuary, a bit of scenery, so beautiful and so perfect you ached when you looked at it?”

“Yes. A time or two.”

“Well, then—a painting or a piece of statuary is a thing outside the human life, your life. It is an emotional experience only. It actually has nothing at all to do with you yourself. You could live very well the rest of your life if you never saw it again, although you would remember it every now and then and the ache would come again at the memory of it. But imagine a form of life, a culture, a way of life,
a way you, yourself could live
, so beautiful that it made you ache just like the painting, but a thousandfold more so. That's what Godfrey saw, that is what he talked with. That is why he came back touched. Feeling like a dirty little boy from across the tracks looking through the bars into fairyland—a real, actual, living fairyland that he could reach out and touch but never be a part of.”

Blaine drew in a long breath and slowly let it out.

“So that is it,” he said. “That is what he wants.”

“Wouldn't you?”

“I suppose. If I had seen it.”

“Ask Godfrey. He will tell you. Or, come to think of it, don't ask him. He'll tell you anyhow.”

“He told you?”

“Yes.”

“And you are impressed?”

“I am here,” she said.

The waitress came with their orders—great sizzling steaks, with baked potatoes and a salad. She set a coffee bottle in the center of the table.

“That looks good,” said Harriet. “I am always hungry. Remember, Shep, that first time you took me out?”

Blaine smiled. “I'll never forget it. You were hungry that time, too.”

“And you bought me a rose.”

“It seems to me I did.”

“You're a sweet guy, Shep.”

“If I recall correctly, you're a newspaper gal. How come—”

“I'm still working on a story.”

“Fishhook,” said Blaine. “Fishhook is your story.”

“Part of it,” she said, returning to her steak.

They ate for a while with very little talk.

“There is one other thing,” Blaine finally said. “Just what gives with Finn? Godfrey said he was dangerous.”

“What do you know of Finn?”

“Not much of anything. He was out of Fishhook before I tied up with it. But the story went around. He came back screaming. Something happened to him.”

“Something did,” said Harriet. “And he's been preaching it up and down the land.”

“Preaching?”

“Hell and brimstone preaching. Bible-pounding preaching, except there is no Bible. The evil of the stars. Man must stay on Earth. It's the only safe place for him. There is evil out there. And it has been the parries who have opened up the gates to this spawn of evil.…”

“And the people swallow that?”

“They swallow it,” said Harriet. “They wallow in it clear up to their middles. They absolutely love it. They can't have the stars, you see. So there's satisfaction to them that the stars are evil.”

“And the parries, I suspect, are evil, too. They are ghouls and werewolves.…”

“And goblins,” said Harriet. “And witches. And harpies. You name it and they're it.”

“The man's a mountebank.”

Harriet shook her head. “Not a mountebank. He's as serious as Godfrey. He believes the evil. Because, you see, he saw the evil.”

“And Godfrey saw the good.”

“That's it. It's as simple as all that. Finn is just as convinced Man has no business among the stars as Godfrey is convinced he'll find salvation there.”

“And both of them are fighting Fishhook.”

“Godfrey wants to end the monopoly but retain the structure. Finn goes farther. Fishhook's incidental to him. PK is his target. He wants to wipe it out.”

“And Finn's been fighting Stone.”

“Harassing him,” said Harriet. “There's no way to fight him, really. Godfrey shows little for anyone to hit at. But Finn found out about him and sees him as the one key figure who can prop the parries on their feet. If he can, he'll knock him out.”

“You don't seem too worried.”

“Godfrey's not worried. Finn's just another problem, another obstacle.”

They left the restaurant and walked down the strip of pavement that fronted on the units.

The river valley lay in black and purple shadow with the river a murky bronze in the dying light of day. The tops of the bluffs across the valley still were flecked with sunlight, and far up in the sky a hawk still wheeled, wings a silver flash as he tilted in the blue.

They reached the door of the unit, and Blaine pushed it open and stood aside for Harriet, then followed. He had just crossed the threshold when she bumped into him as she took a backward step.

He heard the sharp gasp in her throat, and her body, pressed against his, went hard and tense.

Looking over her shoulder, he saw Godfrey Stone, face downward, stretched upon the floor.

TWENTY-ONE

Even as he bent above him, Blaine knew that Stone was dead. There was a smallness to him, a sort of essential withering of the human form, as if life had been a basic dimension that had helped to fill him out. Now he was something less than six feet of limp body clothed in crumpled cloth, and the stillness of him was somehow very dreadful.

Behind him, he heard Harriet pulling shut the door and shooting home the bolts. And in the clatter of the bolts he thought he heard a sob.

He bent down for a closer look and in the dimness could make out the darker shine of hair where the blood had oozed out of the skull.

The window shutters creaked and groaned, sliding home with a clatter as Harriet shoved the lever that controlled them.

“Maybe, now,” he said, “we can have a little light.”

“Just a minute, Shep.”

The lighting toggle clicked and light sprang from the ceiling, and in the glare of it Blaine could see how a heavy blow had crushed in the skull.

There was no need to hunt for pulse, no need to listen for a heartbeat. No man could live with a skull so out of shape.

Blaine rocked back and teetered, crouched upon his toes, marveling at the ferocity and, perhaps, the desperation, which must have driven the arm that had delivered such a blow.