Fishhook overplayed its hand by building in any security at all, for none was really needed. Left to yourself, you might have escaped every second week, but come trailing back when you found how rough it was outside. But when you found that there were physical barriers — when you found out about the men and guns and dogs — then you had a challenge and it became a game and it was your life you were shoving out into the pot. . . .”
“But,” said Blaine, “there couldn’t have been too many escapes, not even many tries. Otherwise Fishhook would have dreamed up new angles. They’d never let it stand.”
Stone grinned wolfishly. “You’re right. There were not many who ever made it. There were few who even tried.”
“You and Lambert Finn.”
“Lambert,” Stone said, dryly, “was a daily inspiration for me. He’d escaped some years before I was taken there. And there was one other, years before Lambert. No one knows to this day what ever happened to him.”
“Well, O.K.,” asked Blaine, “what does happen to a man who escapes from Fishhook, who runs away from Fishhook? Where does he end up? Here I am, with a couple of dollars in my pocket that aren’t even mine, but belong to Riley, without identity, without a profession or a trade. How do I—”
“You sound as if you might regret having run away.”
“There are times I have. Momentarily, that is. If I had it to do over, I’d do it differently. I’d have it planned ahead. I’d transfer some funds to some other country. I’d have a new identity all worked out and pat. I’d have boned up on something that would turn me into an economic asset—”
“But you never really believed that you’d have to run. You knew it had happened to me, but you told yourself it couldn’t happen to yourself.”
“I guess that is about the size of it.”
“You feel,” said Stone, “that you’ve turned into a misfit.”
Blaine nodded.
“Welcome to the club,” said Stone.
“You mean—”
“No, not me. I have a job to do. A most important job.”
“But—”
“I’m speaking,” Stone told him, “of a vast segment of all mankind. I have no idea how many million people.”
“Well, of course, there always were—”
“Wrong again,” said Stone. “It’s the parries, man, the parries. The parries who are not in Fishhook. You couldn’t have traveled almost a thousand miles and—”
“I saw,” said Blaine, a cold shudder building in him, an icelike quality that was neither fear nor hate, but a part of both. “I saw what was happening.”
“It’s a waste,” said Stone. “A terrible waste, both to the parry and the human race. Here are people who are being hunted down, people who are forced into ghettos, people who are reviled and hated — and all the time, within them lies the hope of humankind.
“And I tell you something else. It is not only these intolerant, bigoted, ignorant savages who think of themselves as normal human beings who are to blame for the situation. It is Fishhook itself; Fishhook which must bear part of the blame. For Fishhook has institutionalized paranormal kinetics for its own selfish and particular purpose. It has taken care, most excellent care, of those parries like you and I, handpicking us to carry on their work. But they’ve turned their face against the others. They have given not a sign that they might care what might happen to them. All they’d have to do is stretch out their hand and yet they fail to do it and they leave the other parries in the position of wild animals running in the woods.”
“They are afraid—”
“They just don’t give a damn,” said Stone. “The situation as it stands suits them to the ground. Fishhook started as a human crusade. It has turned into one of the greatest monopolies the world has ever known — a monopoly that is unhampered by a single line of regulation or restriction, except as they may choose to impose upon themselves.”
“I am hungry,” Harriet announced.
Stone paid her no attention. He leaned forward in his chair.
“There are millions of these outcasts,” he declared. “Untrained. Persecuted when they should be given all encouragement. They have abilities at this very moment that mankind, also at this very moment, needs most desperately. They have untrained and latent talents that would prove, if exercised, greater than anything that Fishhook ever has attained.
“There was a time when there was a need for Fishhook. No matter what may happen, no matter what event, the world owes Fishhook more than it ever can repay. But the time has come when we no longer have any need of Fishhook. Fishhook today, so long as it ignores the parries who are not within its fold, has become a brake upon the advancement of the human race. The utilization of PK must no longer remain a monopoly of Fishhook.”
“But there is this terrible prejudice,” Blaine pointed out. “This blind intolerance—”
“Granted,” Stone told him, “and part of it was earned. PK was abused and used, most shamefully used for selfish and ignoble reasons. It was taken and forced into the pattern of the old world that now is dead. And for that reason the parries have a guilt complex. Under this present persecution and their own deep-rooted sense of guilt they cannot operate effectively, either for their own good or for the benefit of humanity. But there is no question that if they could operate openly and effectively, without the pressure of public censure, they could do far more than Fishhook, as it now is constituted, ever can accomplish. And if they were allowed to do this, if they could only be allowed to show that non-Fishhook PK could operate for human betterment, then they’d become accepted and instead of censure would have support and encouragement, and in that day, Shep, Man would have taken a great step forward.
“But we must show the world that PK is a human ability and not a Fishhook ability. And furthermore — if this could be done, then the entire human race would return to sanity and would regain its old-time self-respect.”
“You’re talking in terms,” Blaine told him, “of cultural evolution. It is a process that will take some time. In the end, of course, it may work out naturally — another hundred years.”
“We can’t wait!” cried Stone.
“There were the old religious controversies,” Blaine pointed out. “War between Protestant and Catholic, between Islam and Christianity. And where is it all now? There was the old battle between the Communist dictatorships and the democracies . . .”
“Fishhook helped with that. Fishhook became a powerful third force.”
“Something always helps,” said Blaine. “There can be no end to hope. Conditions and events become so ordered that the quarrel of yesterday becomes an academic problem for historians to chew on.”
“A hundred years,” said Stone. “You’d wait a hundred years?”
“You won’t have to,” Harriet told him. “You have it started now. And Shep will be a help.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Shep,” said Stone, “please listen.”
“I am listening,” said Blaine, and the shudder was growing in him once again, and the sense of alienness, for there was danger here.
“I have made a start,” said Stone. “I have a group of parries — call them underground, call them cadre, call them committee — a group of parries who are working out preliminary plans and tactics for certain experiments and investigations that will demonstrate the effective action which the free, non-Fishhook parries can contribute to their fellow men. . . .”
“Pierre!” exclaimed Blaine, looking at Harriet.
She nodded.
“And this is what you had in mind from the very start. At Charline’s party you said old pal, old friend . . .”