“It is,” said Mr. O’Toole, “because we burrow deep to the heart of nature and do not waste precious vitality of spirit upon those petty concerns which make wreckage of the lives and hopes of humans.”
“But these,” he said, “are dolorous topics on which to waste so glorious an autumn afternoon. So let us fasten our thoughts, rather, with great steadfastness, upon the foaming ale that awaits us on the hilltop.”
He lapsed into silence and started up the path again at a more rapid pace than he had set before.
Scuttling down the path toward them came a tiny goblin, his multicolored, too large shirt whipping in the wind of his headlong running.
“The ale!” he screamed. “The ale!”
He skidded to a halt in front of the three toiling up the path.
“What of the ale?” panted Mr. O’Toole. “Do you mean to confess to me that you have been the sampling of it?”
“It has gone sour,” wailed the little goblin. “The whole bewitched mess of it is sour.”
“But ale can’t go sour,” protested Maxwell, grasping some sense of the tragedy that had taken place.
Mr. O’Toole bounced upon the path in devastating anger. His face turned from brown to red to purple. His breath came gushing out in wheezing gasps.
“It can, bedamned,” he shouted, “with a spell of wizardry!”
He turned around and started rapidly down the path, trailed by the little goblin.
“Leave me at them filthy trolls!” shouted Mr. O’Toole. “Leave me wrap my paws around their guzzles. I will dig them out with these two hands and hang them in the sun to dry. I will skin them all entire. I will teach them lessons they never will unlearn!”
His bellowing dwindled with distance to unintelligible rumbling as he scrambled swiftly down the path, heading for the bridge beneath which the trolls hung out.
The two humans stood watching, filled with admiration and wonder at such ponderous, towering wrath.
“Well,” said Churchill, “there goes our chance at sweet October ale.”
IV
The clock in Music Hall began striking the hour of six as Maxwell reached the outskirts of the campus, riding from the airport on one of the slower, outer belts of the roadway. Churchill had taken another roadway, and Maxwell had been glad of that. Not only that he felt a faint distaste for the man, but from the wish to be alone. He wanted to ride slowly, with the windshield down, in silence, without the need of conversation, to soak up the sight and feel of those few square miles of buildings and of malls—coming home again to the one place that he loved.
Dusk sifted through the campus like a mist of benediction, softening the outlines of the buildings, turning the malls into areas that could have been romantic etchings out of story books.
Knots of students stood about the malls, talking quietly, carrying their satchels or with books tucked beneath their arms. A white-haired man sat on a bench, watching a pair of squirrels playing on the lawn. Two reptilian aliens hunched along one of the misty walks, moving slowly and engrossed in talk. A human student strode smartly along the sidewalk, whistling as he went, the whistle waking echoes in the quiet angles of the buildings. Meeting and passing the reptiles, he lifted an arm in grave salute. And everywhere were the trees, great and ancient elms that had stood since time forgotten, the sturdy sentinels of many generations.
Then the great clock started the ringing of the hour, the bronze clangor of it beating far across the land, and it seemed to Maxwell that in the clock the campus was bidding him hello. The clock was a friend, he thought—not to him alone, but to all within the hearing of it, the voice of the campus. Lying in bed, before he went to sleep, he had listened, night after night, to its chiming, its ringing out of time. And more, perhaps, than the ringing out of time. Rather a watchman in the night crying all was well.
Ahead of him the mighty complex of Time College loomed out of the dusk—looming up to dwarf the roadway and the mall, great blocks of plastic and glass, with lights burning in many of its windows. Squatted at the base of the complex, crouched the museum and across its front Maxwell saw the wind-fluttered whiteness of a sign painted on white fabric. In the dusk and distance he could make out only one word: SHAKESPEARE.
He grinned to himself, thinking of it. English Lit would be beside itself. Old Chenery and all the rest of them had never quite forgiven Time for establishing, two or three years ago, that the Earl of Oxford, not Shakespeare, had been the author of the plays. And this personal appearance of the man from Stratford-on-Avon would be rubbing salt into wounds that were far from healed.
Far ahead, sitting on its hill at the west end of the campus, Maxwell could make out the great dark hulk of the administration section, etched darkly against the last faint brushing of red in the western sky.
The belt moved on, past Time College and its squatting museum with the sign fluttering in the wind. The clock ended its telling of the time, the last notes of the chimes fading far into the distance.
Six o’clock. In another few minutes he would be getting off the belt and heading for the Winston Arms, which had been his home for the last four—no, the last five years. He put his hand into the right-hand pocket of his jacket, and his fingers traced the hard outlines of the small ring of keys tucked into the small key pocket inside the jacket pocket.
Now, for the first time since he’d left Wisconsin Station, the story of that other Peter Maxwell forged to the forefront of his thoughts. It could be true, of course—although it didn’t seem too likely. It would be very much the kind of trick Security might play to crack a man wide open. But if it were not true, why had there been no report from Coonskin of his failure to arrive? Although, he realized, that piece of information also had come from Inspector Drayton, as well as the further information that the same thing had happened twice before. If Drayton could be suspect on one story, he also was suspect on the other two. If there had been other beings picked up by the crystal planet, he had certainly not been told of them when he had been there. But that also, Maxwell reminded himself, was no trustworthy evidence. Undoubtedly the creatures on the crystal planet had told him only those things they wanted him to know.
The thing that bothered him the most, come to think of it, was not what Drayton had said, but what Mr. O’Toole had told him: We sent the wreath of mistletoe and holly to express our deepest grief. If events had turned out differently, he would have talked with his goblin friend about it, but the way things went, there had been no chance to talk of anything at all.
It all could wait, he told himself. In just a little while, once he had gotten home, he’d pick up a phone and make a call—to any one of many people—and then he’d know the truth. Who should he call? he wondered. There was Harlow Sharp, at Time, or Dallas Gregg, chairman of his own department, or maybe Xigmu Maon Tyre, the old Eridanean with the snow-white fur and the brooding violet eyes who had spent a long lifetime in his tiny cubbyhole of an office working out an analysis of the structuring of myths. Or maybe Allen Preston, friend and attorney. Preston, probably, he told himself, for if what Drayton had told him should happen to be true, there might be some nasty legal questions stemming out of it.
Impatiently, he snarled at himself. He was believing it, he was beginning to believe it; if he kept on like this, he could argue himself into thinking that it might be true.
The Winston Arms was just down the street. He got up from his seat, picked up his bag and stepped to the barely moving outer belt. He got off in front of the Winston Arms.
No one was in sight as he climbed the broad stone stairs and went into the foyer. Fumbling in his pocket, he took out the key ring and found the key that unlocked the outer door. An elevator stood waiting, and he got into it and pressed the button for the seventh floor.
The key slid smoothly into the lock of his apartment and when he twisted it the door came open. He stepped into the darkened room. Behind him the door swung shut automatically, with a snicking of the lock, and he reached out his hand toward th
e panel to snap on the light.
But with his hand poised to press, he stopped. For there was something wrong. A feeling, a sense of something, a certain smell, perhaps. That was it—a smell. The faint, delicate odor of a strange perfume.
He smashed his hand against the panel, and the lights came up.
The room was not the same. The furniture was different. And the screaming paintings on the wall—he had never had, he would never have paintings such as that!
Behind him the lock snicked again, and he spun around. The door swung open and a sabertooth tiger stalked in.
At the sight of Maxwell, the big cat dropped into a crouch and snarled, exposing six-inch stabbing fangs.
Gingerly, Maxwell backed away. The cat crept closer by a foot, still snarling. Maxwell took another backward step, felt the sudden blow above the ankle, tried to twist away, but was unable to, and knew that he was falling. He had seen the hassock, he should have remembered it was there—but he hadn’t. He’d backed into it and tripped himself and now he was going over flat upon his back. He tried to force his body to relax against striking on the floor—but he didn’t hit the floor. His back smashed down into a yielding softness, and he knew he’d landed on the couch that stood behind the hassock.
The cat was sailing through the air in a graceful leap, its ears laid back, its mouth half open, its massive paws outstretched to form a battering ram. Maxwell raised his arms in a swift defensive gesture, but they were brushed aside as if they’d not been there, and the paws smashed down into his chest, pinning him against the couch. The great cat’s head, with its gleaming fangs, hung just above his face. Slowly, almost gently, the cat lowered its head, and a long pink tongue came out and slathered, raspingly, across Maxwell’s face.
The cat began to purr.
“Sylvester!” cried a voice from the doorway. “Sylvester, cut that out!”
The cat raked Maxwell’s face once again with its moist and rasping tongue, then sat back upon its haunches, with a half-grin on its face and its ears tipped forward, regarding Maxwell with a friendly and enthusiastic interest.
Maxwell struggled to a halfsitting posture, with the small of his back resting on the seat cushions and his shoulders propped against the couch’s back.
“And who might you be?” asked the girl standing in the doorway.
“Why, I . . .”
“You’ve got your nerve,” she said.
Sylvester purred loudly.
“I’m sorry, miss,” said Maxwell. “But I live here. Or at least, I did. Isn’t this 721?”
“It is, indeed,” she said. “I rented it just a week ago.” Maxwell shook his head. “I should have known,” he said. “The furniture was wrong.”
“I had the landlord throw out the old stuff,” she said. “It simply was atrocious.”
“Let me guess,” said Maxwell. “An old green lounger, somewhat the worse for wear. . . .”
“And a walnut liquor cabinet,” said the girl, “and a monstrous seascape and. . . .”
Maxwell lifted his head wearily. “That’s enough,” he said. “That was my stuff that you had thrown out.”
“I don’t understand,” said the girl. “The landlord said the former occupant was dead. An accident, I think.”
Maxwell got slowly to his feet. The big cat stood up, moved closer, rubbed affectionately against his legs.
“Stop that, Sylvester,” said the girl.
Sylvester went on rubbing.
“You mustn’t mind him,” she said. “He’s just a great big baby.”
“A bio-mech?”
She nodded. “The cutest thing alive. He goes everywhere with me. He seldom is a bother. I don’t know what’s got into him. It seems that he must like you.”
She had been looking at the cat, but now she glanced up sharply.
“Is there something wrong with you?” she asked.
Maxwell shook his head.
“You’re sort of frosty around the gills.”
“A bit of shock,” he told her. “I suppose that’s it. What I told you was the truth. I did, at one time, live here. Up until a few weeks ago. There was a mix-up somehow. . . .”
“Sit down,” she said. “Could you use a drink?”
“I suspect I could,” he said. “My name is Peter Maxwell, and I’m a member of the faculty. . . .”
“Wait a moment. You said Maxwell? Peter Maxwell. I remember now. That’s the name.”
“Yes, I know,” said Maxwell. “Of the man who died.”
He sat down carefully on the couch.
“I’ll get the drink,” the girl said.
Sylvester slid closer and gently laid his massive head in Maxwell’s lap. Maxwell scratched him behind an ear; and, purring loudly, Sylvester turned his head a bit to show Maxwell where it itched.
The girl came with the drink and sat down beside him.
“I still don’t understand,” she told him. “If you’re the man who—”
“The whole thing,” Maxwell told her, “becomes somewhat complicated.”
“I must say you’re taking it rather well. Shaken up a bit, perhaps. But not stricken in a heap.”
“Well, the fact of the matter is,” said Maxwell, “that I halfway knew it. I’d been told, you see, but I didn’t quite believe it. I suppose the truth is that I wouldn’t let myself believe it.” He raised the glass. “You’re not drinking?”
“If you’re all right,” she said. “If you feel okay, I’ll get one for myself.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said Maxwell. “I’ll manage to survive.” He looked at her and for the first time really saw her—sleek and trim, with bobbed black hair, long eyelashes, high cheekbones and eyes that smiled at him. “What’s your name?” he asked. “I am Carol Hampton. A historian at Time.”
He said, “Miss Hampton, I apologize for the situation. I have been away—off planet. Just returned. And I had a key, and it fit the door and when I’d left it had been my place.”
“No need to explain,” she said. “We’ll have the drink,” he said. “Then I’ll get up and go. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you’d be willing to have dinner with me. Let’s call it a way for me to repay your understanding. You could have run out shrieking.”
“If this was all a pitch!” die said. “If you—”
“It couldn’t be,” he said. “I’d be too stupid to get it figured out. And, besides, how come I had the key?”
She looked at him for a moment, then said, “It was silly of me. But Sylvester will have to go with us. He won’t be left alone.”
“Why,” said Maxwell, “I wouldn’t think of leaving him. He and I are pals.”
“It’ll cost you a steak,” she warned. “He is always hungry and he eats nothing but good steaks. Big ones. Raw.”
V
The Pig & Whistle was dark and clamorous and smoky. The tables were jammed together, with narrow lanes between them. Candles burned with flickering flames. The murmurous din of many voices, seemingly talking all at once, filled the low-ceilinged room.
Maxwell stopped and peered, trying to locate a table that might be vacant. There wasn’t any. But he wanted to eat here. The place was a hangout of students and some members of the faculty; it spelled the campus to him.
He said to Carol Hampton, “Perhaps we should go somewhere else.”
“There’ll be someone along in just a minute,” she said, “to Show us to a table. Everyone seems so busy. There must have been a rush—Sylvester! Cut that out!”
She spoke appealingly to the people at the table beside which they stood. “You’ll excuse him, please. He has no manners, none at all. Especially table manners. He snatches everything in sight.” Sylvester licked his chops, looking satisfied.
“Think nothing of it, miss,” said the man with the bushy beard. “I really didn’t want it. To order steak is just compulsive with me.”
Someone shouted across the room. “Pete! Pete Maxwell!” Maxwell peered int
o the gloom. At a far table, inserted in a corner, someone had risen and was waving his arms. Maxwell finally made him out. It was Alley Oop, and beside him sat the white-shrouded figure of Ghost.
“Friends of yours?” asked Carol.
“Yes. Apparently they want us to join them. Do you mind?”
“The Neanderthaler?” she asked.
“You know him?”
“No. I just see him around at times. But I’d like to meet him. And that is the Ghost?”
“The two are inseparable,” said Maxwell.
“Well, let’s go over, then.”
“We can say hello and go somewhere else.”
“Not on your life,” she said. “This place looks interesting.”
“You’ve never been here before?”
“I’ve never dared,” she said.
“I’ll break the path,” he told her.
He forged slowly among the tables, trailed by the girl and cat.
Alley Oop lunged out into the aisle to meet him, flung his arms around him, hugged him, then grasped him by the shoulders and thrust him out at arms-length to stare into his face.
“You are Old Pete?” he asked. “You aren’t fooling us?”
“I am Pete,” said Maxwell. “Who do you think I am?”
“Well, what I want to know then,” said Oop, “is who in hell it was we buried three weeks ago last Thursday. Both me and Ghost were there. And you owe us twenty bucks refund on the flowers we sent. That is what they cost us.”
“Let us sit down,” said Maxwell.
“Afraid of creating a scene,” said Oop. “Hell, this place is made for scenes. There are fist fights every hour, and there’s always someone jumping up on a table and making a speech.”
“Oop,” said Maxwell, “there is a lady present, and I want you to tame down and get civilized. Miss Carol Hampton, this great oaf is Alley Oop.”
“I am delighted to meet you, Miss Hampton,” said Alley Oop. “And what it that you have there with you? As I live and breathe, a saber-toother! I’ll have to tell you about the time, during a blizzard, I sought shelter in a cave and this big cat was there and me with nothing but a dull stone knife. I had lost my club, you see, when I met the bear, and—”
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