Clifford Simak - Time is the Simplest Thing

“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.

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.

He looked at Harriet and nodded quietly, wondering at her calmness, then remembering, even as he wondered, that in her reporting days violent death could have been no stranger to her.

“It was Finn,” she said, her voice quiet and low, so quiet that one could sense the checkrein she’d put upon herself. “Not Finn, himself, of course. Someone that he hired. Or someone that volunteered. One of his wide-eyed followers. There are a lot of people who’d do anything for him.”

She came across the room and squatted across the corpse from Blaine. Her mouth was set in a straight, grim line. Her face was pinched and stern. And there was a streak down her face where a single tear had run.

“What do we do now?” he asked. “The police, I would imagine.”

She made a restraining motion with her arm.

“Not the police,” she said. “We can’t afford to get tangled up in this. That would be exactly what Finn and his crew would want. What do you bet that someone has phoned the police already?”

“You mean the killer?”