Clifford Simak: Time is the Simplest Thing

She drove cautiously, traveling in the dry creek bed, clinging close against the wall of rock that came down out of darkness. Birds fled squawling from the bushes, and branches dragged against the car, screeching in their agony of tortured wood.

The headlights showed a sharp bend, with a barn-size boulder hemming in the wall of rock. The car slowed to a crawl, thrust its nose into the space between the boulder and the wall, swiveled its rear around and went inching through the space into the clear again.

Harriet cut down the jets, and the car sank to the ground, grating on the gravel in the creek bed. The jets cut out and the engine stopped and silence closed upon them.

“We walk from here?” asked Blaine.

“No. We only wait awhile. They’ll come hunting for us. If they heard the jets, they’d know where we had gone.”

“You go clear to the top?”

“Clear to the top,” she said.

“You have driven it?” he asked.

“Many times,” she told him. “Because I knew that if the time ever came to use it, I’d have to use it fast. There’d be no time for guessing or for doubling back. I’d have to know the trail.”

“But why, in the name of God—”

“Look, Shep. You are in a jam. I get you out of it. Shall we let it go at that?”

“If that’s the way you want it, sure. But you’re sticking out your neck. There’s no need to stick it out.”

“I’ve stuck out my neck before. A good newsman sticks out the neck whenever there is need to.”

That might be true, he told himself, but not to this extent. There were a lot of newspapermen in Fishhook and he’d drank with most of them. There were a few he could even call his friends. And yet no one of them — no one but Harriet — would do what she was doing.

So newspapering by itself could not be the answer. Nor could friendship be the entire answer, either. It was something more than either, perhaps a good deal more than either.

The answer might be that Harriet was not a newswoman only. She must be something else. There must be another interest and a most compelling one.

“One of the other times you stuck your neck out, did you stick it out for Stone?”

“No,” she said. “I only heard of Stone.”

They sat in the car, listening, and from far down the canyon came the faint muttering of jets. The muttering came swiftly up the road, and Blaine tried to count them and it seemed that there were three, but he could not be sure.

The cars came to the turn-around and stopped, and men got out of them and tramped into the brush. They called to one another.

Harriet put out a hand and her fingers clamped around Blaine’s arm.

Shep, what did you do to Freddy? (Picture of a grinning death’s-head.)

Knocked him out, is all.

And he had a gun?

Took it away from him.

(Freddy in a coffin, with a tight smile on his painted face, with a monstrous lily stuck between his folded hands.)

No. Not that. (Freddy with a puffed-up eye, with a bloody nose, a cross-hatch of patches on his blotchy face.)

They sat quietly, listening.

The shouts of the men died away, and the cars started up and went down the road.

Now?

We’ll wait, said Harriet. Three came up. Only two went back. There is still one waiting (a row of listening ears, all stretched out of shape with straining for a sound). They’re sure we came up the road. They don’t know where we are. This is (a gaping trap with jagged rows of teeth). They’ll figure we’ll think they went away and will betray ourselves.

They waited. Somewhere in the woods a raccoon whickered, and a bird, disturbed by some nighttime prowler, protested sleepily.

There is a place, said Harriet. A place where you’ll be safe. if you want to go there.

Anyplace. I haven’t any choice.

You know what the outside’s like?

I’ve heard.

They have signs in some towns (a billboard with the words: PARRY, DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU HERE). They have prejudice and intolerance and there are (bearded, old-time preachers thumping pulpits; men clad in night-gowns, with marks upon their faces and rope and whip in hand; bewildered, frightened people cowering beneath a symbolic bramblebush).

She said in a vocal whisper: “It’s a dirty, stinking shame.”

Down on the road the car had started up. They listened to it leave.

“They gave up finally,” said Harriet. “They may still have left a man behind, but we’ll have to chance that.”

She started the engine and turned up the jets. With the lights switched on, the car nosed up the stream bed. The way grew steeper and the bed pinched out. The car moved along a hog’s back, dodging clumps of bushes. They picked up a wall of rock again, but it was on the left side now. The car dipped into a crevasse no more than a paint-layer distant away from either side and they inched along it. The crevasse pinched sharply out, and they were on a narrow ledge with black rock above and black emptiness below. For an eternity they climbed, and the wind grew chill and bitter and finally before them was a flatness, flooded by a moon dipping toward the west.

Harriet stopped the car and slumped in the seat.

Blaine got out and fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He finally found it and there was only one left in the pack. It was very badly crumpled. He straightened it out carefully and lit it. Then he walked around the car and stuck it between Harriet’s lips.

She puffed on it gratefully.

“The border’s up ahead,” she said. “You take the wheel. Another fifty miles across country. Very easy going. There’s a little town where we can stop for breakfast.”

The crowd had gathered across the street from the restaurant. It was clustered thickly about Harriet’s car and it was watching closely and it was deadly silent. Ugly, but not noisy. Angry, and perhaps just slightly apprehensive, perhaps just on the edge of fear. Angry, more than likely, because it was afraid.

Blaine pressed his back against the wall of the restaurant where, a few minutes before, they had finished breakfast. And there had been nothing wrong at breakfast. It had been all right. No one had said a thing. No one stared at them. Everything had been normal and very commonplace.

“How could they tell?” asked Blaine.

“I don’t know,” said Harriet.

“They took down the sign.”

“Or maybe it fell over. Maybe they never had one. There are some that don’t. It takes a lot of belligerence to put up a sign.”

“These babies look belligerent enough.”

“They may not be after us.”

“Maybe not,” he said. But there was no one else, there was nothing else against which they would be banded.

Listen closely, Shep. If something happens. If we are separated. Go to South Dakota. Pierre in South Dakota (map of the United States with Pierre marked with a star and the name in big red letters and a purple road that led from this tiny border town to the city on the wide Missouri).

I know the place, said Blaine.

Ask for me at this restaurant (the facade of a building, stone-fronted, big plate windows with an ornate, silver-mounted saddle hanging in one window, a magnificent set of elk antlers fixed above the door). It’s up on the hill, above the river. Almost anyone will know me. They can tell you where I am.

We won’t get separated.

But if we do, you mind what I say.

Of course I will, said Blaine. You have lugged me this far. I’ll trust you all the way.

The crowd was beginning to seethe a little — not actually moving, but stirring around, beginning to get restless, as if it might be gently frothing. And a murmur rose from it, a sullen, growling murmur without any words.