Clifford Simak - Time is the Simplest Thing

“I am hungry,” Harriet announced.

Stone paid her no attention. He leaned forward in his chair.

“There are millions of these outcasts,” he declared. “Untrained. Persecuted when they should be given all encouragement. They have abilities at this very moment that mankind, also at this very moment, needs most desperately. They have untrained and latent talents that would prove, if exercised, greater than anything that Fishhook ever has attained.

“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.

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.”