Time Is the Simplest Thing Read Online Free PDF Page B

lightly on the cheek.
    â€œNow run along and play,” she said.
    He stood and watched her move away into the crowd.
    Inside him the Pinkness stirred, a question mark implicit in its stirring.
    Just a while , Blaine told it, watching the crowd. Let me handle it a little longer. Then we’ll talk it over .
    And he felt the gratitude, the sudden tail-wag of appreciation for being recognized.
    We’ll get along , he said. We’ve got to get along. We’re stuck with one another .
    It curled up again—he could feel it curling up, leaving things to him.
    It had been frightened to start with, it might become frightened again, but at the moment it was accepting the situation—and to it the situation, he knew, must seem particularly horrific, for this place was a far and frightening cry from the detachment and serenity of that blue room on the far-off planet.
    He drifted aimlessly across the room, skirting the bar, pausing a moment to peer into the room which contained the newly installed dimensino, then heading for the foyer. For he must be getting on. Before morning light he either must be miles away or be well hidden out.
    He skirted little jabbering groups and nodded at a few acquaintances who spoke to him or waved across the room.
    It might take some time to find a car in which a forgetful driver had left the key. It might be—and the thought came with brutal force—he would fail to find one. And if that were the case, what was there to do? Take to the hills, perhaps, and hide out there for a day or two while he got things figured out. Charline would be willing to help him, but she was a chatterbox, and he would be a whole lot better off if she knew nothing of the matter. There was no one else he could think of immediately who could give him any help. Some of the boys in Fishhook would, but any help they gave him would compromise themselves, and he was not as desperate as all that. And a lot of others, of course, but each of them with an ax to grind in this mad pattern of intrigue and petition which surrounded Fishhook—and you could never know which of them to trust. There were some of them, he was quite aware, who would sell you out in the hope of gaining some concession or some imagined position of advantage.
    He gained the entrance of the foyer and it was like coming out of some deep forest onto a wind-swept plain—for here the surflike chatter was no more than a murmuring, and the air seemed clearer and somehow a great deal cleaner. Gone was the feeling of oppression, of the crowding in of bodies and of minds, of the strange pulse beat and crosscurrent of idle opinion and malicious gossip.
    The outer door came open, and a woman stepped into the foyer.
    â€œHarriet,” said Blaine, “I might have known you’d come. You never miss Charline’s parties, I remember now. You pick up a running history of all that’s happened of importance and—”
    Her telepathic whisper scorched his brain: Shep, you utter, perfect fool! What are you doing here? ( Picture of an ape with a dunce cap on its head, picture of the south end of a horse, picture of a derisive phallic symbol .)
    â€œBut, you—”
    Of course. Why not (a row of startled question marks)? Do you think only in Fishhook? Only in yourself? Secret, sure—but I have a right to secrets. How else would a good newspaperman pick up (heaps of blowing dirt, endless flutter of statistics, huge ear with a pair of lips flapping loosely at it )?
    Harriet Quimby said, sweetly, vocally: “I wouldn’t miss Charline’s parties for anything at all. One meets such stunning people.”
    Bad manners , said Blaine, reprovingly. For it was bad manners. There were only certain times when it was permissible to use telepathy—and never at a social function.
    To hell with that , she said. Lay bare my soul for you and that is what I get. (A face remarkably like his with a thin, trim hand laid very smartly on