He sat wondering why those landscapes should stick so tightly, like a burr against his mind. Wondering, too, how the artist could have known how the ghostly inhabitants of the crystal planet flickered. It could not be merely happenstance; it was not the sort of thing a man might readily imagine. Reason said that Lambert must have known about those ghostly people; reason just as plainly said it was impossible.
And what about all those other creatures, all those other grotesque monstrosities Lambert had spread with an insane, vicious brush across the canvasses? Where did they fit in? Where might they have come from? Or were they simply mad figments of imagination, tom raw and bleeding from a strangely tortured mind? Were the people of the crystal planet the only authentic creatures Lambert had depicted? It did not seem too likely. Somewhere or other, somehow or other, Lambert must have seen these other creatures, too. And was the landscape pure imagination, brushed in to maintain the mood established by the creatures, or might it have been the landscape of the crystal planet at some other time, before it had been fixed forever in the floor and roof that shut it in against the universe? But that, he told himself, was impossible! The planet had been enclosed before the present universe was born. Ten billion years at least, perhaps as much as fifty billion.
Maxwell stirred uneasily. It made no sense at all. None of it made any sort of sense. He had trouble enough, he told himself, without worrying about Lambert’s paintings. He had lost his job, his estate was locked in probate, he didn’t have a legal standing as a human being.
But none of that mattered too much, not right now, anyhow. First came the matter of the hoard of knowledge on the crystal planet. It was a knowledge the University must have—a body of knowledge in the known galaxy. Some of it would duplicate what was already known, but there would be other huge areas of understanding which were yet unthought of. The little that he had had the time to see bolstered that belief.
Once again, it seemed, he was hunkered down before the table, almost like a coffee table, on which he’d piled the metal sheets he had taken from the shelves, and with the contraption that was a reader, an interpreter, call it what one might, fastened to his head.
There had been the sheet of metal that talked about the mind, not in metaphysical nor in philosophic terms, but as a mechanism, employing terms and concepts that he could not grasp. He had struggled with the terminology, for he knew that here was understanding no human yet had touched, but it was beyond him. And there was that other piece of metal, a basic text on the application of certain mathematical principles to the social sciences, although some of the social sciences that were mentioned he could only guess at, groping after the concepts as a blind man might grope after flitting butterflies. There had been histories not of one universe, but two—and natural history which had told of life forms so fantastic in their basic principles and their functions that they seemed unbelievable, and a very thin sheet of metal, so thin it bent and twisted, like a sheet of paper, when he handled it, that had been so far beyond his understanding that he could not quite be sure what it was about And a thicker piece of metal, a much thicker piece, wherein he read the thoughts and philosophies of creatures and of cultures long since gone to dust that had sent him reeling back, frightened, disgusted, outraged and dismayed, but still full of a fearful wonder, at the utter inhumanity expressed in those philosophies.
All that and more, much more, a trillion times more, was waiting out there on the crystal planet.
It was important, he reminded himself, that he carry out the assignment that he had been given. It was vital that the library of the crystal planet be attained, and quickly. For if he failed there was a good possibility that the planet would seek another market, offer what it had in another sector of the galaxy, or perhaps out of the galaxy entirely.
The Artifact, he told himself, could be the price.
A flight of blackbirds came swirling down out of the sky, skimming just above the roof of the shack, sailing over the roadway. Maxwell watched them settle into the dying vegetation of a stretch of marsh, balancing their bodies delicately on the bending stems of rank-growing weeds, come there to feed for an hour or so before flying off to roost in some secluded woodland they had picked as bivouac on their migration southward.
Maxwell got up and stretched. The peace and the quiet of the tawny afternoon had soaked into his body. He’d like a nap, he thought. After a time Oop would come back home and wake him and they’d have something to eat and talk for a while before he went off to Nancy’s.
He opened the door and went into the shack, crossing the floor to sit upon the bed. Maybe, he thought, he ought to see if he still had a clean shirt and an extra pair of socks to don before the party. He reached out and hauled his bag off the floor and dumped it on the bed.
Opening the catches, he threw back the lid and took out a pair of trousers to get at the shirts that were packed beneath them. The shirts were there and so was something else, a contraption with a headband and two eyepieces folded up against it.
He stared at it in wonder, recognizing it. It was the translator which he had used on the crystal planet to read the metal tablets. He lifted it out and let it dangle in his hand. Here was the band to clamp around the head, with the power pack in the back, and the two eyepieces one flipped down into position once the device was fastened on the head.
He must have packed it by mistake, he thought, although he could not, for the life of him, remember packing it. But there it was. Perhaps no harm was done. It might even be used at some future time to help substantiate his claim he had been on the planet. It was not good evidence. It was just a gadget that had an ordinary look about it, although it might not seem so ordinary if someone poked around in the mechanism of it.
A light tapping came from somewhere. Maxwell, surprised by so small a noise, stiffened and held himself rigid, listening. Perhaps a wind-blown branch, he thought, tapping on the roof, although it didn’t sound like a branch against the roof.
The tapping stopped and then began again, this time not a steady rapping, but rather like a code. Three quick taps and then a pause, followed by two rapid taps and then another pause, with the pattern of the tapping repeated once again.
It was someone at the door.
Maxwell got up from the bed and stood undecided. It might be newsmen who had finally tracked him down. If that should be the case, it might be best to leave the door unanswered. But the tapping didn’t seem boisterous enough, or demanding enough, for a newsman who had finally run him to his lair. The taps were soft, almost tentative, the kind of tapping that might be done by someone who did not want to advertise his presence.
The tapping took up again. Maxwell trudged to the door and threw it open. Outside stood the Shrimp, a ghostly, gleaming white in the wash of sunlight. Beneath one of his limbs, which now served as an arm rather than a leg, he clutched a paper-wrapped bundle tight against his body.
“For the love of God, come in,” said Maxwell, sharply, “before someone sees you here.”
The Shrimp came in. Maxwell closed the door, wondering what it was that had caused him to urge it in.
“You need no apprehension,” said the Shrimp, “about news harvesters. I was careful and I noticed. No one followed me. I’m such a foolish-looking creature no one ever follows me. No one ever accords to me any purpose whatsoever.”
“That is a fortunate thing to have,” said Maxwell. “I think that it is called protective coloration.”
“I appear again,” said Shrimp, “on behalf of Miss Nancy Clayton. She knows you carried little on your trip, have had no chance to shop or have laundry done.
No wish to embarrass—charging me to say this with goodly emphasis—but wish to send you clothes to wear.”
He took the bundle from underneath his arm and handed it to Maxwell.
“That is nice of Nancy.”
“She is a thoughtful person. She commissioned me to say further.”
“Go ahead,” said Maxwell. “There will be wheeled veh
icle to take you to the house.”
“There is no need of that,” said Maxwell. “The roadway runs right past her place.”
“Once again apology,” said the Shrimp, with firmness, “but she thinks it best There is much hithering and thithering, by many types of creatures, to learn your Whereabouts.”
“Can you tell me,” asked Maxwell. “how Miss Clayton knows my whereabouts?”
Said the Shrimp, “I truly do not know.”
“All right, then. You’ll thank Miss Clayton for me?”
“With gladness,” said the Shrimp.
XV
“I’ll take you around to the back,” the driver said. “There is a swarm of newsmen hanging around out front. They’ll be gone later on, but now they’re there in droves. Miss Clayton suggested you might not want to meet them.”
“Thank you,” Maxwell said. “It is thoughtful of you.”
Nancy, he told himself, had taken over, as was her usual practice, viewing it as her prerogative to order people’s lives.
Her house stood on the low bluff that hemmed in the western edge of the lake. Off to the left the water gleamed softly in the early moonlight. The front of the house was ablaze with light, but the back was dark.
The car turned off the highway and climbed slowly along a narrow driveway lined by massive oaks. A startled bird flew squawking across the roadway, a flurry of desperately beating wings caught for a moment in the headlights. A pair of dogs came raging down the hollow tunnel of the drive, split and swung on either side the car.
The driver chuckled. “If you were walking, they’d eat you alive.”
“But why?” asked Maxwell. “Why, all at once, must Nancy be guarded by a dog pack?”
“Not Miss Clayton,” the driver said. “It is someone else.”
The question came to Maxwell’s tongue, but he choked it back.
The driver swung the car into a curved driveway that ran beneath an open portico and pulled up to a halt.
“In the back door,” the driver said. “You don’t need to knock. Then straight down the hall past the curved staircase. The party’s up in front.”
Maxwell started to open the car door, then hesitated.
“You need not mind the dogs,” the driver told him. “They recognize the car. Anyone who steps out of it is okay with them.”
There was, in fact, no sign of the dogs, and Maxwell went swiftly up the three steps of the stoop, opened the back door and stepped into the hall.
The hall was dark. A little light filtered down the winding staircase—someone apparently had left on a light on the second story. But that was all; there were no other lights. From somewhere in the front of the house came the muffled sound of revelry.
He stood for a moment without moving. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he could see that the hall ran for some distance toward the center of the house, past the foot of the winding stairs and beyond. There was a door back there, or perhaps an abrupt turn in the hall, that would take him party-ward.
It was strange, he told himself. If Nancy had instructed the driver to bring him to the back, she would have had someone there to greet him, or at least would have seen that there was a light so he could find his way.
Strange, and very awkward, to arrive this way, to grope his way along the hall in search of the others who were there. For a moment he considered turning about and leaving, making his way back to Oop’s place. Then he remembered the dogs. They would be out there and waiting and they looked like vicious brutes.
This whole business, he told himself, was not at all like Nancy. Nancy wouldn’t do a thing like this. There was something very wrong, and he did not like it.
He moved cautiously down the hall, alert for chair or table that might be there to trip him up. He could see a little better now, but the hall was still a tunnel without any details.
He passed the stairs, skirting around their base, and now, with the light from the stairway partially cut off, the hall became darker than it was before.
A voice asked, “Professor Maxwell? Is that you, Professor?”
Maxwell stopped in midstride, balancing on one leg, then carefully put his lifted foot down against the floor and stood, not stirring, while goose bumps prickled on his skin.
“Professor Maxwell,” said the voice, “I know that you’re there.”
It was not a voice, actually, or it didn’t seem to be. There had been no sound, Maxwell could have sworn, yet he had heard the words, not so much, perhaps, in his ear, as somewhere in his brain.
He felt the terror mounting in him and he tried to fight off, but it didn’t go away. It stayed, crouched somewhere out there in the dark, ready to rush in.
He tried to speak and gulped instead. The voice said, “I’ve waited here for you, Professor. I want to communicate with you. It is to your interest as much as it is to mine.”
“Where are you?” Maxwell asked.
“Through the door just to your left.”
“I do not see a door.”
Good common sense hammered hard at Maxwell. Break and run, it said. Get out of here as fast as you can go.
But he couldn’t break and non. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. And if he ran, which way should he run? Not back to the door, for the dogs were waiting out there. Not clattering down the darkened hall, more than likely to bump into something and raise a terrible clatter, to alert the guests up there in front and to be found, when they investigated, disheveled and bruised and sweating with his fear.
For if he ran, he knew, fear would pounce upon him and he’d give way to it.
It was bad enough sneaking in from the back door on a party without being found in a condition such as that.
If it had been just a voice, any kind of voice, it would not have been so frightening, but it was a strange kind of voice—there was no intonation to it, and there was about it a certain raw, mechanical, almost rasping quality.
It was not a human voice, Maxwell told himself. There was an alien in that room.
“There is a door,” the flat, hard voice said. “Step slightly to your left and push against it.”
The whole thing was becoming ridiculous, Maxwell told himself. Either he went through the door or he broke and ran. He might try to simply walk away, but he knew that the minute he turned his back upon that hidden door, he would run—not because he wanted to, but because he had to, running from the fear he had turned his back upon.
He stepped to the left, found the door, and pushed. The room was dark, but from a lamp somewhere in the yard outside, some light filtered through the windows, falling on a roly-poly creature that stood in the center of the room, its pudgy belly gleaming with a writhing phosphorescence, as if a group of luminescent sea-dwellers had been prisoned in a bowl.
“Yes,” the creature said, “you are quite right. I am one of those beings that you call a Wheeler. For my visit here I have given myself a designation that falls easy on your mind. You may call me Mr. Marmaduke. For convenience only, I suspect you understand, for it’s not my name. In fact, none of us have names. They are unnecessary. Our personal identity is achieved in another way.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Marmaduke,” said Maxwell, speaking slowly, the only way he could, since his lips had become, like the rest of him, slightly stiff and frozen.
“And I you, Professor.”
“How did you know who I was?” asked Maxwell. “You seemed to have no doubt at all. You knew, of course, I’d be coming down the hall.”
“Of course,” the Wheeler said.
Now Maxwell could see the creature a bit more clearly, the bloated body supported on two wheels, the lower part of the body gleaming and twisting like a pail of worms.
“You are Nancy’s guest?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “certainly I am. The guest of honor, I believe, at this gathering.”
“Then, perhaps, you should be out with the other guests.”
“I pleaded tiredness,” said Mr. M
armaduke. “A slight prevarication, I must admit, since I am never tired. So I went to rest a while . . .”
“And to wait for me?”
“Precisely,” said Mr. Marmaduke.
Nancy, Maxwell thought. No, Nancy, he was sure, wasn’t in on it. She had a frothy brain, and all she cared about were her everlasting parties, and She’d be incapable of any kind of subtle intrigue.
“There is a subject we can talk about,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “with some profit, I presume, to both of us. You are looking for a buyer for a large commodity. I might have some interest in that particular commodity.”
Maxwell moved back a step and tried to find an answer. But there was no ready answer. Although he should have known, he told himself, or have at least suspected.
“You say nothing,” said Mr. Marmaduke. “I cannot be mistaken. You are, without fail, the agent for the sale?”
“Yes,” said Maxwell. “Yes, I am the agent.”
There was no use denying it, he knew. Somehow or other, this creature in the room knew about the other planet and the hoard of knowledge. And he might know the price as well. Could it have been the Wheeler, he wondered, who had made the offer for the Artifact?
“Well, then,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “let us proceed immediately to business and a discussion of the terms. Not forgetting, in the course of it, to mention the commission that will be coming to you.”
“I am afraid,” said Maxwell, “that is impossible at the moment I do not know the terms. You see, I was first to find a potential buyer and then—”
“No trouble whatsoever,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “for I have the knowledge that you lack.”
“And you will pay the price?”
“Oh, without any question,” said the Wheeler. “It will take just a little time. There are certain negotiations which must be terminated. Once those are done, you and I can complete all business and the matter will be done, without any fuss or trouble. The only thing, it would appear to me, is a determination of the commission which you will have earned so richly.”
The Complete Serials Page 109