He heard the purring of the signal on the wire.
“They’ll need some darkness,” he said. “They couldn’t come in—”
“I don’t know,” said Harriet, “what you could be up to.”
“Hello,” said a voice in the phone.
“Is Anita there?”
“Right here,” said the voice. “Just a moment.” Anita, for you. A man.
And that was impossible, Blaine thought wildly. You simply couldn’t do it. Perhaps he’d imagined it.
“Hello,” said Anita Andrews. “Who is this?”
Blaine. Shepherd Blaine. Remember? I was with the man who had the shotgun. With the silver shot.
Yes, 1 remember you.
And it was true, he thought. He had not imagined it. You could use telepathy on the telephone!
You said that if I ever needed help.
Yes, I told you that.
I need help now. A body on the floor: police car coming down the road, red light flashing, siren howling; a speedometer and clock that had sprouted legs and were racing for a tape; the sign that said The Plainsman, the unit number on the door.) I swear to you, Anita. This is on the level. I can’t explain right now. But this is on the level. I can’t let them find him here.
We’ll take him off your hands.
On faith?
On faith alone. You were square with us that night.
Hurry!
Right away. I’ll bring some others.
Thanks, Anita. But she was already gone.
He stood there, holding the receiver out from his face, staring at it, then slowly put it in the cradle.
“I caught part of that,” said Harriet. “It isn’t possible.”
“Of course it’s not,” said Blaine. “Telly transmission on a wire. You don’t have to tell me.”
He stared down at the man lying on the floor. “It’s one of the things he talked about. Greater than Fishhook could ever be, he said.”
Harriet didn’t answer.
“I wonder how much else they have?” said Blaine.
“She said they’d come for Godfrey. How will they come for him? How soon?”
There was a hint of hysteria in her voice.
“They fly,” he told her. “They are levitators. Witches.”
He made a bitter laugh.
“But you—”
“How did I know them? They ambushed us one night. Just out to raise some hell. Riley had a shotgun. . . .”
“Riley!”
“The man in the hospital room, remember? The man who died. He was in an accident.”
“But, Shep, were you with Riley? How did you come to be with him?”
“I hitched a ride. He was scared at night. He wanted someone with him. We nursed that ramshackle truck . . .”
She was staring at him, a startled look about her.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “You said something back there in the hospital. You said you were—”
“Looking for him. Godfrey had hired him and he was late and—”
“But . . .”
“What is it, Shep?”
“I talked to him just before he died. He tried to give me a message, but he couldn’t get it out. The message was for Finn. That was the first I heard of Finn.”
“Everything went wrong,” said Harriet. “Every blessed thing. There was the star machine . . .”
She stopped what she was saying and came across the room to stand beside him. “But you don’t know about the star machine. Or do you?”
He shook his head. “Like the ones in Fishhook? The ones that helped us to the stars?”
She nodded. “That’s what Riley was hauling in his truck. Godfrey had arranged to get it and he had to get it moved to Pierre somehow. So he hired Riley. . . .”
“A bootleg star machine!” said Blaine, a little awed. “You know that every nation in the world has laws against possessing them. They’re only legal if they are in Fishhook.”
“Godfrey knew all that. But he needed one. He tried to build one, but he couldn’t. There aren’t any blueprints.”
“You bet your life there aren’t.”
“Shep, what is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know. There’s really nothing wrong. A bit confused, perhaps. At how, all along the line, I was pitchforked into this.”
“You can always run.”
“Harriet, you know better. I am through with running. There’s no place for me to go.”
“You could always approach some business group. They’d be glad to have you. They’d give you a job, pay you plenty for what you know of Fishhook.”
He shook his head, thinking back to Charline’s party, with Dalton sitting there, long legs outstretched, his hair a rumpled mouse nest, his mouth mangling the cigar. And Dalton saying: “In a consultive capacity you’d be worth a lot of money.”
“Well, you could,” said Harriet.
“I couldn’t stomach it. Besides, I made a promise. I told Godfrey I was with him. And I don’t like the way that things are going. I don’t like people taking me out to hang me because I am a parry. I don’t like some of the things I saw along the road and—”
“You’re bitter,” she said. “You have a right to be.”
“And you?”
“Not bitter. Just scared. Scared down to the marrow.”
You scared! A tough newspaper gal. . . .
He turned toward her, remembering something — the place where the old blind woman sold the roses. That night, he had seen the mask slip from Harriet Quimby and this was the second time.
Her face told him the truth — the tough newspaper gal also, at times, could be a frightened woman.
He half lifted his arms, and she crossed the little space between them. He held her close against him, and she was soft and pliant, not hard, not made of steely purpose, but very human flesh.
It’ll be all right, he said. Everything will be all right. And wondered at the sudden tenderness and protectiveness he felt, which certainly was alien in any relation he might have with this girl within his arms.
But the truck is wrecked and the trucker’s dead and the police, or maybe even Finn, have the star machine. And now Godfrey’s lying dead and the police are coming . . .
We’ll lick them all, he told her. There’s nothing that can stop us. . . .
A siren sounded from far off, a wail torn by the prairie wind.
She sprang away from him. “Shep, they’re coming!”
“The back door!” Blaine said, quickly. “Run toward the river. We’ll get down into the breaks.”
He sprang toward the door, and as his fingers found the bolt, there was a tapping on it.
He threw back the bolt and jerked open the door and standing in the fan of light that came pouring from the room was Anita Andrews and back of her other youthful faces.
“Just in time,” said Blaine.
’This body?”
“Over there,” he said.
They came in with a rush.
The siren was much closer.
“He was a friend of ours,” said Harriet, uncertainly. “This seems a dreadful way—”
“Miss,” Anita said, “well take care of him. We’ll give him every honor. . . .”
The siren was a steady howl that seemed to fill the room. Quick! Anita said. Fly low. You don’t want to silhouette against the sky.
Even as she spoke the room was emptying and there was no body on the floor.
She hesitated for a moment, looking at the two of them.
Someday you’ll tell me what this is all about?
Someday, said Blaine. And thanks.
Any time, she said. We parries stick together. We have to stick together. They’ll smash us if we don’t.
She swung toward Blaine, and he felt the touch of her, mind against mind, and there was suddenly the sense of fireflies in the evening dusk and the smell of lilacs drifting in the softness of a river fog.
Then she was gone and the door was closing and
someone was hammering at the front.
Sit down, Blaine said to Harriet. Act as naturally as you can. Unconcerned. Relaxed. We were just sitting here and talking. Godfrey had been with us, but he went into town. Someone came and he rode into town with them. We don’t know who it was. He should be back in an hour or two.
Check, said Harriet.
She sat down in a chair and folded her hands in her lap sedately.
Blaine went to the door to let in the law.
TWENTY-TWO
Belmont was beginning to close up. All the houses, as they drove past, had been tightly shuttered, and in the business district, as they drove into it, the shop lights were going out.
Up the street a block or two, the marquee of the hotel still gleamed brightly in the dusk and just this side of it was a flashing sign that proclaimed the Wild West Bar still was willing to take on a customer.
“I don’t think,” said Harriet, “that we fooled those police too much.”
Blaine agreed. “Maybe not. But we had them stopped. There was nothing they could find.”
“I thought for a while they would pull us in.”
“So did I. But you sat there making gentle fun of them. That was hard to take. They were glad to get away. They must have felt like fools.”
He motioned at the flashing bar sign. “Maybe we should start with that.”
“As good a place as any. Likewise, about the only place there is.”
The bar was empty when they came into the place. The bartender had an elbow propped and was idly dabbing with a cloth at imaginary wet spots.
Blaine and Harriet hoisted themselves onto stools opposite the man.
“What’ll it be?” he demanded of them.
They told him.
He got glasses and reached for bottles.
“Little slow tonight,” said Blaine.
“Almost closing time,” said the man. “They don’t stick around. Soon as it gets dark folks get under cover. Everyone in this town.”
“Bad town?”
“No, not especially. It’s the curfew law. This place has got a tough one. Patrols all over the place and them cops are tough. They really make it stick.”
“How about yourself?” asked Harriet.
“Oh, I am all right, miss. The boys, they know me. They know the circumstances. They know I got to stick around just in case a late customer, like you, drops in. From the hotel mostly. They know I got to get the place tucked in and turn out the lights. They give me extra minutes.”
“Sounds tough, all right,” said Blaine.
The barkeep wagged his head. “For your own protection, mister. Folks ain’t got no sense. If it wasn’t for the curfew, they’d stay out to all hours where anything could get them.”
He stopped what he was doing.
“I just happened to think,” he announced. “I got something new. You might like to try it.”
“Like what?” asked Harriet.
He reached back and got the bottle, held it up to show them.
“Something new,” he said. “Straight out of Fishhook. They picked it up some outlandish place. Sap of a tree or something. Probably loaded with a lot of hydrocarbons. I got a couple of bottles off the factor at the Trading Post. Just to try, you know. Thought there might be some folks who might like it.”
Blaine shook his head. “Not for me. God knows what is in it.”
“Me, neither,” said Harriet.
The barkeep set the bottle back regretfully.
“I don’t blame you folks,” he said, giving them the drinks he’d made. “I took a nip of it myself. Just to test it out, you see, because I’m no drinking man.
“Not,” he added, quickly and parenthetically, “that I have anything against it.”
“Of course not,” Harriet sympathized.
“It was funny tasting stuff,” he said. “Not bad, you know. Not good, either. Had a musty tang. You might get to like it if you had a drink or two.”
He stood in silence for a moment, with his hands planted solidly on the bar.
“You know what I been thinking?” he demanded.
“Not the least,” said Harriet.
“I been wondering all this afternoon if that factor down at the Trading Post concocted that stuff up himself. Just as a sort of stinking joke, you see.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t dare.”
“Well, I imagine you are right, miss. But all of them factors are funny sorts of jerks. Folks don’t have much to do with them — socially, at least — but even so they manage to know more of what is going on than anyone in town. They must be listening all the time, for they have all the latest gossip.
“And,” said the barkeep, laying emphasis upon this horrid crime and this social failing, “they don’t never tell you nothing.”
“Ain’t it a fact,” Harriet agreed, enthusiastically.
The barkeep subsided into brooding silence.
Blaine took a wild shot in the dark. “Lots of folks in town,” he said. “Big doings?”
The barkeeper settled down into solid conversational stance and his voice dropped to a confidential level.
“You mean you ain’t heard about it?”
“No. Just got in town a couple of hours ago.”
“Well, mister, you won’t believe this — but we got a star machine.”
“A what?”
“A star machine. It’s one of them contraptions that parries use to travel to the stars.”
“Never heard of them.”
“No reason that you should. The only place they’re legal is in Fishhook.”
“You mean this one is illegal?”
“Couldn’t be no more illegal. The state police, they’ve got it down in the old highway shed. You know, the one on the west edge of town. Maybe you drove by it coming in tonight.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“Well, anyhow, it’s there. And then, on top of that, who should show up but Lambert Finn.”
“You don’t mean the Lambert Finn?”
“No one else. He’s up there, in the hotel right now. He’s going to have a big mass meeting out by the highway shed tomorrow. I hear the police have agreed to haul out the star machine so he can preach about it, with it standing there, right out in plain sight of all the people. I tell you, mister, that will be something worth your while to listen. He’ll spout more brimstone than you ever heard before. He’ll lay it on them parries. He’ll take the hide clean off them. They won’t dare to show their faces.”
“Not many of them around, most likely, in a town like this.”
“Well,” the bartender said, drawing out the word, “not many in the town itself. But there’s a place just a ways from here, down by the river. A place called Hamilton. It’s all parry. It’s a new town the parries built. Parries from all over. There’s a name for a place like that — I should know the name, but I can’t remember it. Like the place they used to keep the Jews in Europe.”
“Ghetto.”
The bartender smote the bar with a disgusted hand. “Now, why couldn’t I think of that? Yes, mister, that’s the word. Ghetto. Except in the old days it was in the poor part of a city and now its out in the country, in the poor part of the country. That land down by the river don’t amount to shucks. No place to build a town. But them parries like it down there. Long as they don’t bother no one, no one bothers them. Long as they stay in line, we leave them alone. And we know where they are, and they know we know. Any time things start going wrong, we know right where to look.”
He glanced at the clock. “If you folks want me to start another round, you’ll have time to gulp it down.”
“No, thanks,” said Blaine. He laid two bills on the bar. “Let it ride,” he said.
“Why, thank you, sir. I thank you very much.”
As they slid off the stools, he said: “If I were you, I’d get under cover as soon as possible. The cops will be down on top of you if they catch you out.’
“We will,” said Harriet. “An
d thanks for the conversation.”
“Pleasure,” said the barkeep. “Pleasure any time.”
Outside the bar, Blaine held the car door for Harriet, then walked around it to get in on the other side.
“The highway shed?” he asked.
“Shep, what would you do there? We’d just get into trouble.”
“I’ll figure out a way. We simply can’t leave that machine there for Finn to preach a sermon over.”
“So I suppose you figure you’ll just haul it off.”
“No, I guess not. It’s too big and clumsy. But there has to be a way. We have to put a crimp in Finn. Somehow, we’ve got to manage.”
“They’ll have a guard.”
“I don’t think so, Harriet. Locked and bolted, but no guard. There isn’t anyone who would stand on guard. This town is plenty scared.”
“You’re just like Godfrey,” she said. “Both of you go around sticking out your necks.”
“You thought a lot of Godfrey.”
“Yes, a lot,” she said.
He started up the engine and swung the car out into the street.
The old highway shed was black and silent and there was nothing to indicate there was anyone around. They rode past it twice to look it over, moving slowly, and it was the same each time — just the big shed standing there, a relic of the days when there were highways to maintain, when there was need of road machinery to keep their surfaces in shape.
Blaine pulled the car off the road and threaded it easily through a willow thicket, set it down and turned off the lights.
Silence closed down on them; the darkness pulsed with quietness.
“Harriet,” said Blaine.
“Yes, Shep.”
“You stay here. Don’t move. I am going up there.”
“You won’t be long? There’s nothing you can do.”
“I won’t be long,” he said. “Have we got a flashlight?”
“There’s one in the glove compartment.”
He heard her fumbling in the dark. The catch on the door of the compartment clicked and the tiny light inside came on. The flashlight lay amid a clutter of road maps, of sunglasses, of other odds and ends.
She handed it to him. He snapped it on to test it, and it worked. He shut it off again and got out of the car.
“Sit tight,” he told her.
Time is the Simplest Thing Page 15
