Clifford Simak - Time is the Simplest Thing

“I turned from the phone,” he said, “and they were waiting for me. I went along with them. There was nothing else to do. They took me to a place . . .” (A great sprawling place set upon a seacoast, with one huge rambling house — white, so white it glistened — with the sky so blue above it that the blueness hurt one’s eyes, a blue that picked up and reflected back the brightness of the sun, and yet a blue with depth that one could gaze into so far that he was lost in distance. And around the sprawling building, other buildings that fell short of the sprawling big house only because of their lack of size. A sweep of lawn that one knew instantly could grow so lushly only by virtue of constant watering. Beyond the green of lawn lay a snow-shite strip of sandy beach and the green-blue of the ocean with the froth of spray thrown high into the air where the surf came hammering in on the rocks beyond the beach. And upon the beach the gypsy color of many umbrellas . . . .)

“It was, I found out later, in Baja California. A perfect wilderness of a place with this fabulous resort planted in the wilderness . . .” (The golf course flags flapping in the ocean breeze, the flat white rectangles of the tennis court, the patio with the guests sitting idly and talking, waiting for the liquor carts and the sandwich trays and dressed in vacation costumes that were impeccable.) “There was fishing such as you had never dreamed of and hunting in the hills and swimming the entire year around . . .”

“Hard to take,” said Harriet, idly.

“No,” said Stone, “not hard to take at all. Not for six weeks. Not even for six months. There was everything a man might want. There was food and drink and women. Your slightest wish was filled. Your money was no good. Everything was free.”

“But I can see,” said Blaine, “how a man might—”

“Of course you can,” said Stone. “The utter uselessness. As if someone had taken you, a man, and turned you back into a boy, with nothing left but play. And yet Fishhook was being kind. Even as you hated it and resented it and rebelled against it, you could see their point. They had nothing against us, really. There had been no crime, no negligence of duty — that is, with most of us there hadn’t. But they couldn’t take the chance of continuing to use us and they could not turn us loose, for there must, you understand, be no blot upon the Fishhook name. It never must be said of them that they turned loose upon the world a man with a streak of alienness, with a mind or an emotion that deviated even by a hairsbreadth from the human viewpoint. So they gave us a long vacation — an endless vacation — in the kind of place that millionaires inhabit.

“And it was insidious. You hated it and still you could not leave, for common sense would tell you that you were a fool to leave it. You were living safe and high. There was no question of security. You really had it made. You thought about escaping — although you could scarcely think of it as escape, for there was nothing really holding you. That is, until you tried. Then you found out about the guards and outposts. Only then you learned that every trail and road was covered. This despite the fact that a man afoot would have been committing suicide to go charging out into the land. You found out, by slow degrees, about the men who watched you all the time — the men who posed as guests but were really Fishhook agents who kept an eye on every one of you, waiting for the sign that you were getting set, or even thinking of getting out of there.

“But the bars that held you, the bars that kept you in were the luxury and soft living. It is hard to walk out on a thing like that. And Fishhook knows it is. It is, I tell you, Shep, the tightest, hardest prison man has yet devised.

“But, like any other prison, it made you tough and hard. It made you fight to get tough and hard, to get tough enough to make up your mind, and hard enough, once you’d made it up, to carry out your plan. When you learned about the spies and guards, you got sly and clever, and those very spies and guards were the ones who gave you purpose.

Fishhook overplayed its hand by building in any security at all, for none was really needed. Left to yourself, you might have escaped every second week, but come trailing back when you found how rough it was outside. But when you found that there were physical barriers — when you found out about the men and guns and dogs — then you had a challenge and it became a game and it was your life you were shoving out into the pot. . . .”

“But,” said Blaine, “there couldn’t have been too many escapes, not even many tries. Otherwise Fishhook would have dreamed up new angles. They’d never let it stand.”

Stone grinned wolfishly. “You’re right. There were not many who ever made it. There were few who even tried.”

“You and Lambert Finn.”

“Lambert,” Stone said, dryly, “was a daily inspiration for me. He’d escaped some years before I was taken there. And there was one other, years before Lambert. No one knows to this day what ever happened to him.”

“Well, O.K.,” asked Blaine, “what does happen to a man who escapes from Fishhook, who runs away from Fishhook? Where does he end up? Here I am, with a couple of dollars in my pocket that aren’t even mine, but belong to Riley, without identity, without a profession or a trade. How do I—”

“You sound as if you might regret having run away.”

“There are times I have. Momentarily, that is. If I had it to do over, I’d do it differently. I’d have it planned ahead. I’d transfer some funds to some other country. I’d have a new identity all worked out and pat. I’d have boned up on something that would turn me into an economic asset—”

“But you never really believed that you’d have to run. You knew it had happened to me, but you told yourself it couldn’t happen to yourself.”

“I guess that is about the size of it.”

“You feel,” said Stone, “that you’ve turned into a misfit.”

Blaine nodded.

“Welcome to the club,” said Stone.

“You mean—”

“No, not me. I have a job to do. A most important job.”

“But—”

“I’m speaking,” Stone told him, “of a vast segment of all mankind. I have no idea how many million people.”

“Well, of course, there always were—”

“Wrong again,” said Stone. “It’s the parries, man, the parries. The parries who are not in Fishhook. You couldn’t have traveled almost a thousand miles and—”

“I saw,” said Blaine, a cold shudder building in him, an icelike quality that was neither fear nor hate, but a part of both. “I saw what was happening.”

“It’s a waste,” said Stone. “A terrible waste, both to the parry and the human race. Here are people who are being hunted down, people who are forced into ghettos, people who are reviled and hated — and all the time, within them lies the hope of humankind.

“And I tell you something else. It is not only these intolerant, bigoted, ignorant savages who think of themselves as normal human beings who are to blame for the situation. It is Fishhook itself; Fishhook which must bear part of the blame. For Fishhook has institutionalized paranormal kinetics for its own selfish and particular purpose. It has taken care, most excellent care, of those parries like you and I, handpicking us to carry on their work. But they’ve turned their face against the others. They have given not a sign that they might care what might happen to them. All they’d have to do is stretch out their hand and yet they fail to do it and they leave the other parries in the position of wild animals running in the woods.”

“They are afraid—”

“They just don’t give a damn,” said Stone. “The situation as it stands suits them to the ground. Fishhook started as a human crusade. It has turned into one of the greatest monopolies the world has ever known — a monopoly that is unhampered by a single line of regulation or restriction, except as they may choose to impose upon themselves.”