Clifford Simak - Time is the Simplest Thing

He gave them the co-ordinates and repeated them again so there’d be no mistake.

And here is how you do it.

He brought out the slimy alien knowledge and held it for them to see until they became accustomed to it, then step by step he showed them the technique and the logic, although there really was no need, for once one had seen the body of the knowledge, the technique and the logic became self-evident.

Then he repeated it again so there’d be no misunderstanding.

The minds drew back from him, and he stood alone with Anita at his side.

He saw them staring at him as they drew away.

What’s the matter now? he asked Anita.

She shuddered. It was horrible.

Naturally. But I’ve seen worse.

And that was it, of course. He’d seen worse, but these people never had. They’d lived all their life on Earth; they knew nothing but the Earth. They had never really touched an alien concept, and that was all this concept was. It was not really as slimy as it seemed. It was only alien. There were a lot of alien things that could make one’s hair stand up on end while in their proper alien context they were fairly ordinary.

Will they use it? Blaine asked.

The gaunt-faced woman said to him: I overheard that, young man. It’s dirty, but we’ll use it. What else is there for us to do?

You can stay here.

We’ll use it, said the woman.

And you’ll pass it along?

We’ll do the best we can.

They began to move away. They were uneasy and embarrassed as if someone had told a particularly dirty joke at the church’s ice-cream social.

And you? Blaine asked Anita.

She turned slowly from his side to face him. You had to do it, Shep. There was no other way. You never realized how it would seem to them.

No, I never did. I’ve lived so long with alien things. I’m part alien, really. I’m not entirely human.

Hush, she said. Hush, I know just what you are.

Are you sure, Anita?

Very sure, she said.

He drew her to him and held her tight against him for a moment, then he held her from him and peered into her face, seeing the tears that were just behind the smile inside her eyes.

“I have to leave,” he told her. “There’s one thing else to do.”

“Lambert Finn?”

He nodded.

“But you can’t,” she cried. “You can’t!”

“Not what you think,” he told her. “Although, God knows, I’d like to. I would like to kill him. Up to this very moment, that was what I had intended.”

“But is it safe — going back like this?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see. I can buy some time. I’m the only man who can. Finn’s afraid of me.”

“You’ll need a car?”

“If you can find me one.”

“We’ll be leaving, probably shortly after dark. You’ll be back by then?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You’ll come back to go with us? You’ll come back to lead us?”

“Anita, I can’t promise. Don’t try to make me promise.”

“If we’re gone, you’ll follow?”

He only shook his head.

He could give no answer.

The hotel lobby was quiet and almost empty. One man was dozing in a chair. Another read a paper. A bored clerk stood behind the desk, staring across the street and snapping his fingers absent-mindedly.

Blaine crossed the lobby and went down the short corridor toward the stairs. The elevator operator lounged beside the open cage.

“Lift, sir?” he asked.

“No bother,” Blaine told him. “It’s just one short flight.”

He turned and started up the stairs and he felt the skin tightening on his back and there was a prickling of the hairs at the base of his skull. For he might very well, he knew, be walking straight to death.

But he had to gamble.

The carpet on the tread muffled his footfalls so that he moved up the stairs in silence except for the nervous whistling of his breath.

He reached the second floor and it was the same as it had been before. Not a thing had changed. The guard still sat in the chair tilted back against the wall. And as Blaine came toward him, he tilted forward and sat spraddle-legged, waiting.

“You can’t go in now,” the guard told Blaine. “He chased everybody out. He said he’d try to sleep.”

Blaine nodded. “He had a real tough time.”

The guard said, confidentially: “I never seen a man hit quite so hard. Who do you figure done it?”

“Some more of this damn magic.”

The guard nodded sagely. “Although he wasn’t himself even before it happened. He was all right that first time you saw him, but right after that, right after you left, he was not himself.”

“I didn’t see any difference in him.”

“Like I told you, he was all right. He came back all right. An hour or so later I looked in and he was sitting in his chair, staring at the door. A funny kind of stare. As if he maybe hurt inside. And he didn’t even see me when I looked. Didn’t know that I was there until I spoke to him.”

“Maybe he was thinking.”

“Yeah, I suppose. But yesterday was awful. There was all the crowd here, come to hear him speak, and all of them reporters, and they went out to the shed where he had this star machine . . .”

“I wasn’t here,” said Blaine, “but I heard about it. It must have been quite a shock.”

“I thought he’d die right there,” said the guard. “Right there on the spot. He got purple in the face and—”

“What do you say,” suggested Blaine, “if we just look in? If he’s asleep, I’ll leave. But if he’s still awake, I’d like a quick word with him. It’s really quite important.”

“Well, I guess that would be all right. Seeing you’re his friend.”

And that, thought Blaine, was the final pay-off in this fantastic game. Finn had not breathed a word about him, for he’d not dared to breathe a word about him. Finn had let it be presumed that he was a friend, for such a presumption was a shield for Finn himself. And that was why there’d been no hunt for him. That was why Finn’s hoods had not turned Hamilton inside out in a frantic search for him.

This was the pay-off, then — unless it was a trap.

He felt his muscles tensing and he forced them to relax.

The guard was getting up and fumbling for the key.

“Hey, wait a minute there,” said Blaine. “You’d better shake me down.”

The guard grinned at him. “No need of that,” he said. “You was clean before. You and Finn went out of here arm in arm. He told me you was an old friend he hadn’t seen in years.”

He found the key and unlocked the door.

“I’ll go in first,” he said. “I’ll see if he’s asleep.”

He swung the door open quietly and moved across the threshold, Blaine following close behind.

The guard stopped so abruptly that Blaine bumped into him.

The guard was making funny noises deep inside his throat.

Blaine put out a hand and pushed him roughly to one side.

Finn was lying on the floor.

And there was about him a strange sense of alienness.

His body was twisted as if someone had taken it and twisted it beyond the natural ability of a body to contort itself. His face, resting on one cheek, was the visage of a man who had glimpsed the fires of hell and had smelled the stench of bodies that burned eternally. His black clothing had an obscene shine in the light from the lamp that stood beside a chair not far from the body. There was a wide blot of darkness in the carpeting about his head and chest. And there was the horror of a throat that had been slashed wide open.