Time Is the Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak Read Free Book Online Page B

through the space into the clear again.
    Harriet cut down the jets, and the car sank to the ground, grating on the gravel in the creek bed. The jets cut out and the engine stopped and silence closed upon them.
    â€œWe walk from here?” asked Blaine.
    â€œNo. We only wait awhile. They’ll come hunting for us. If they heard the jets, they’d know where we had gone.”
    â€œYou go clear to the top?”
    â€œClear to the top,” she said.
    â€œYou have driven it?” he asked.
    â€œMany times,” she told him. “Because I knew that if the time ever came to use it, I’d have to use it fast. There’d be no time for guessing or for doubling back. I’d have to know the trail.”
    â€œBut why, in the name of God—”
    â€œLook, Shep. You are in a jam. I get you out of it. Shall we let it go at that?”
    â€œIf that’s the way you want it, sure. But you’re sticking out your neck. There’s no need to stick it out.”
    â€œI’ve stuck out my neck before. A good newsman sticks out the neck whenever there is need to.”
    That might be true, he told himself, but not to this extent. There were a lot of newspapermen in Fishhook and he’d drank with most of them. There were a few he could even call his friends. And yet no one of them—no one but Harriet—would do what she was doing.
    So newspapering by itself could not be the answer. Nor could friendship be the entire answer, either. It was something more than either, perhaps a good deal more than either.
    The answer might be that Harriet was not a newswoman only. She must be something else. There must be another interest and a most compelling one.
    â€œOne of the other times you stuck your neck out, did you stick it out for Stone?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “I only heard of Stone.”
    They sat in the car, listening, and from far down the canyon came the faint muttering of jets. The muttering came swiftly up the road, and Blaine tried to count them and it seemed that there were three, but he could not be sure.
    The cars came to the turn-around and stopped, and men got out of them and tramped into the brush. They called to one another.
    Harriet put out a hand and her fingers clamped around Blaine’s arm.
    Shep, what did you do to Freddy? (Picture of a grinning death’s-head.)
    Knocked him out, is all .
    And he had a gun?
    Took it away from him .
    (Freddy in a coffin, with a tight smile on his painted face, with a monstrous lily stuck between his folded hands.)
    No. Not that. (Freddy with a puffed-up eye, with a bloody nose, a cross-hatch of patches on his blotchy face.)
    They sat quietly, listening.
    The shouts of the men died away, and the cars started up and went down the road.
    Now?
    We’ll wait , said Harriet. Three came up. Only two went back. There is still one waiting (a row of listening ears, all stretched out of shape with straining for a sound). They’re sure we came up the road. They don’t know where we are. This is (a gaping trap with jagged rows of teeth). They’ll figure we’ll think they went away and will betray ourselves .
    They waited. Somewhere in the woods a raccoon whickered, and a bird, disturbed by some nighttime prowler, protested sleepily.
    There is a place , said Harriet. A place where you’ll be safe. If you want to go there .
    Anyplace. I haven’t any choice .
    You know what the outside’s like?
    I’ve heard .
    They have signs in some towns (a billboard with the words: PARRY, DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU HERE). They have prejudice and intolerance and there are (bearded, old-time preachers thumping pulpits; men clad in nightgowns, with masks upon their faces and rope and whip in hand; bewildered, frightened people cowering beneath a symbolic bramblebush) .
    She said in a vocal whisper: “It’s a dirty, stinking shame.”
    Down on the road the car had started up. They listened to it