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

see a mob in action?”
    Blaine shook his head.
    â€œIt ain’t a pretty sight.”
    â€œHow about this Sara? She’s a parry, too.”
    â€œWell, I tell you, friend. Sara has good blood behind her. Fell on evil times, but her family’s been here for more than a hundred years. The town just tolerates her.”
    â€œAnd she’s handy as a spotter.”
    The sheriff shook his head and chuckled. “There ain’t much,” he said, with local pride, “that filters past our Sara. She has a busy time of it, watching all the strangers that come into town.”
    â€œYou catch a lot of parries that way?”
    â€œTolerable,” said the sheriff. “Every now and then. A tolerable number, I would say.”
    He motioned at the desk. “Just dump your pockets there. The law says I got to do it. I’ll fix up a receipt for you.”
    Blaine began digging in his pockets. Billfold, card case, handkerchief, key ring, matches and, finally, the gun.
    He lifted it out rather gingerly and laid it with the other stuff.
    The sheriff eyed it. “You had that all the time?”
    Blaine nodded.
    â€œAnd you never reached for it?”
    â€œI was too scared to reach for it.”
    â€œYou got a permit for it?”
    â€œI don’t even own it.”
    The sheriff whistled softly through his teeth.
    He picked up the gun and broke it. There was the coppery shine of cartridge cases.
    The sheriff opened a desk drawer and tossed it in.
    â€œNow,” he said, as if relieved, “I’ve got something legal I can hold you on.”
    He picked up the book of matches and handed them to Blaine.
    â€œYou’ll want these for smoking.”
    Blaine put them in his pocket.
    â€œI could get you cigarettes,” the sheriff said.
    â€œNo need,” Blaine told him. “I carry them sometimes, but I don’t do much smoking. Usually I wear them out carrying them before I get around to smoking.”
    The sheriff lifted a ring of keys off a nail.
    â€œCome along,” he said.
    Blaine followed him into a corridor that fronted on a row of cells.
    The sheriff unlocked the nearest one, across the corridor from the door.
    â€œYou’ve got it all alone,” he said. “Ran the last one out last night. Boy who came across the border and got himself tanked up. Figured he was as good as white folks.”
    Blaine walked into the cell. The sheriff banged and locked the door.
    â€œAnything you want,” he said, with a fine show of hospitality, “just yell out and say so. I’ll get it for you.”

EIGHT
    It had gone by many names.
    Once it had been known as extrasensory perception. And then there had been a time when it had been psionics, psi for short. But first of all it had been magic.
    The medicine man, with the oxides that he used for paint, with his knucklebones to rattle in the skull, with his bag of nauseous content, may have practiced it in a clumsy sort of way before the first word had been written—grasping at a principle he did not understand, more than likely not even knowing that he did not understand, not realizing there was anything he ought to understand. And the knowledge was passed on, from hand to inept hand. The witch doctor of the Congo used it, the priests of Egypt knew it, the wise men of Tibet were acquainted with it. And in all these cases it was not wisely used and it was not understood and it got mixed up with a lot of mumbo jumbo and in the days of reason it became discredited and there was scarcely anyone who believed in it.
    Out of the days of reason rose a method and a science, and there was no place for magic in the world that science built—for there was no method in it and there was no system in it and it could not be reduced to a formula or equation. So it was suspect and it was outside the pale and it was all stupid foolishness. No man in his right mind would once consider it.
    But they called it PK now for