Clifford Simak - Time is the Simplest Thing

Jackson said: “They blocked us on the phone. But we used long tellies. We got through to some of the other groups and they have spread the word. We don’t know how far.”

“Nor how well,” said Andrews.

“Your tellies still can contact these groups?” asked Blaine.

Andrews nodded.

Jackson said: “Finn’s men never showed. And it has us worried. Finn ran into trouble. . . .”

“They should have showed,” said Andrews. “They should have turned us inside out in their hunt for you.”

“Perhaps they don’t want to find me.”

“Perhaps,” Jackson told him coldly, “you’re not what you say you are.”

Blaine’s temper flared. “To hell with you,” he shouted. “I damn near died for you. Go on and save yourselves.”

He turned on his heel and walked away, with the anger surging in him.

It was not his fight. Not personally his fight. No more his fight than any one of them. But he had made it his. Because of Stone, because of Rand and Harriet, because of the priest who’d hounded him across half the continent, he had tried to make a fight of it. And perhaps, as well, because of something undefinable, unknown to himself, unsuspected in himself — some crazy idealism, some deep-rooted sense of justice, some basic aversion to bullies and bigots and reformers.

He had come to this village with a gift — he had hurried here so he could give it to them. And they had stood and questioned his integrity and purpose.

To hell with them, he said.

He had been pushed far enough. He would be pushed no further.

There was just one thing left that was worth the doing and he would go and do it and from that moment on, he told himself, there would be nothing more that mattered, for him or anyone.

“Shep!”

He kept on walking.

“Shep!”

He stopped and turned around.

Anita was walking from the crowd.

“No,” he said.

“But they are not the only ones,” she said. “There are the rest of us. We will listen to you.”

And she was right, of course.

There were the rest of them.

Anita and all the rest of them. The women and the children and those other men who were not in authority. For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person.

And in this a parry or a community of parries was no different from a normal person or a community of normal persons. Paranormal ability, after all, did not change the person. It merely gave him a chance to become a better person.

“You failed,” Anita said. “We could not expect that you would succeed. You tried and that’s enough.”

He took a step toward her.

“But I didn’t fail,” he said.

They were coming toward him now, all of them, a mass of people walking slowly and silently toward him. And in front of them walked Anita Andrews.

She reached him and stood in front of him and looked up into his face.

She kept her voice low. “Where have you been?” she asked. “Some of us went out and scouted on the river. We located the canoe.”

He reached out an arm and caught her and swung her to his side and held her tight against him.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “in just a little while. What about these people?”

“They are scared,” she said. “They’ll grab at any hope.”

The crowd came to a halt a dozen feet away, and a man in front said: “You’re the man from Fishhook.”

Blaine nodded. “I was from Fishhook. I’m not with them any longer.”

“Like Finn?”

“Like Finn,” admitted Blaine.

“Like Stone, too,” Anita said. “Stone was from Fishhook, too.”

“You are afraid,” said Blaine. “You’re afraid of me and Finn and of the entire world. But I’ve found a place where you’ll never need to think of fear again. I’ve found a new world for you and if you want it, it is yours.”

“What kind of a world, mister? One of the alien worlds?”

“A world like the best of Earth,” said Blaine. “I’ve just come from there. . . .”

“But you came walking down the bluff. We saw you walking down the bluff. . . .”

“Shut up, you fools!” Anita screamed. “Give him a chance to tell you.”

“I found a way,” said Blaine. “I stole a way, call it what you will — for one to go to the stars in both mind and body. I went out to the stars last night. I came back this morning. No machine is needed. All you need is a little understanding.”

“But how can we tell—”

“You can’t,” said Blaine. “You gamble, that is all.”

“But even Fishhook, mister—”

“Last night,” Blaine said, slowly, “Fishhook became obsolete. We don’t need Fishhook any more. We can go anywhere we wish. We don’t need machines. We just need our minds. And that is the goal of all paranormal research. The machines were never more than just a crutch to help our limping mind. Now we can throw away that crutch. We have no need for it.”

A gaunt-faced woman pushed through the crowd.

“Let’s cut out all this talk,” she said. “You say you found a planet?”

“That I did.”

“And you can take us there?”

“No one needs to take you. You can go yourself.”

“You are one of us, young man. You have an honest face. You wouldn’t lie to us?”

Blaine smiled. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Then tell us how to go.”

Someone cried out: “Can we take some stuff with us?”

Blaine shook his head. “Not much. A mother could take her baby if she held it in her arms. You could pack a knapsack and strap it on your back. You could sling a bag across your shoulder. You could take along a pitchfork and an ax and another tool or two.”

A man stirred out of line and said: “We’ll have to go about this right. We’ll have to figure out what we want to take. We’ll need food and garden seed and some clothes and tools. . . .”

“You can come back for more,” said Blaine, “any time you like. There’s nothing hard about it.”

“Well,” said the gaunt-faced woman, “let’s not be standing here. Let us get about it. Why don’t you tell us, sir?”

“There’s just one thing,” said Blaine. “You have long tellies here?”

“I’m one of them,” the woman told him. “Me and Myrtle over there and Jim back in the crowd and—”

“You’ll have to pass the word along. To as many as you can. And the ones you pass it on to will have to pass it on to others. We have to open the gates to as many as we can.”

The woman nodded. “You just tell it to us.”

There was a murmur in the crowd and they all were moving forward, flowing in on Blaine and Anita to form a ring around them.

“All right,” said Blaine, “catch on.”

He felt them catching on, gently closing in upon his mind, almost as if they were becoming one with him.

But that wasn’t it at all, he thought. He was becoming one with them. Here in the circle the many minds had become one mind. There was one big mind alone and it was warm and human and full of loving kindness. There was a hint of springtime lilac and the smell of nighttime river fog stealing up the land and the sense of autumn color when the hills were painted purple by an Indian summer. There was the crackling of a wood fire burning on the hearth, and the dog lay there sleeping by the fire and the croon of wind as it crawled along the eaves. There was a sense of home and friends, of good mornings and good nights, of the neighbor across the way and the sound of church bells ringing.

He could have stayed there, floating, but he swept it all away.

Here are the co-ordinates of the planet you are going to, he told them.