The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  The trolls, their fangs gleaming against the brown, wrinkled viciousness of their faces, their roached hair seeming to bristle more stiffly than was the usual case, came pounding down the path, with the massive stone along behind them, raising puffs of dust as it gouged into the ground.

  Boiling out of the gate behind them came a cloud of goblins, armed with clubs, with hoes, with pitchforks, apparently with anything they could lay their hands upon.

  Maxwell leaped out of the path as the trolls bore down upon him. They were running silently and with vast determination, their weight bent against the ropes, while the goblin horde pursued them with wild warhoops and Shrieks. In the foreground of the goblin band, Mr. O’Toole ran heavily, his face and neck violet with his anger, a short length of two-by-four brandished in his fist.

  At the point where Maxwell had leaped out of the way, the path took a sudden dip, toboganning downward in a rocky slide to the fairy green. At the top of the dip the block of stone took a mighty leap as its forward edge struck a rocky ledge. The ropes hung slack, and the block came down and bounced and then, with the ropes flying, started pinwheeling down the hill.

  One of the trolls looked behind him and shouted a frantic warning. The trolls dropped the ropes and scattered. The block of stone went tearing down the slope, gaining speed with every revolution. It struck the fairy green and gashed a great hole in it, made one last bounce into the air, mushed down into the grass and skidded, ripping up the sod, tearing an ugly gash across the place of dancing. Crashing into a large white oak at the far end of the green, it finally came to rest.

  The goblins went roaring down the hill in pursuit of the trolls, scattering out into the trees to hunt down the stealers of the stone. Hoots of fear and yelps of rage floated up the hill, intermingled with the sound of many bodies threshing through the underbrush.

  Maxwell crossed the path and walked over to the pole fence. Old Dobbin now Had quieted down and stood with his lower jaw resting on one of the topmost poles, as if he needed it to prop him up. He was staring down the hill.

  Maxwell reached out a hand and stroked Dobbin’s neck, pulled gently at one ear. Dobbin slanted a gentle eye toward him and whuff led his upper lip.

  “I hope,” Maxwell said to him, “that they won’t expect you to drag back that stone. It’s a long, steep pull.”

  Dobbin flicked one ear, languidly.

  “If I know O’Toole,” Maxwell said, “I don’t expect you’ll have to. If he can round up the trolls, they’ll foe the ones who’ll do it.”

  The uproar down the hill had quieted now and in a little while Mr. O’Toole came puffing up the path, carrying the two-by-four across one shoulder. He still was purple of face, but apparently from exhaustion rather than rage. He hurried from the path toward the fence, and Maxwell walked out to meet him.

  “My great apology,” said Mr. O’Toole, in as stately a voice as he could manage with the shortness of his breath. “I glimpsed you and was happy of your presence, but engaged most earnestly and very urgently. You witnessed, I suspect, the lowdown happening.”

  Maxwell nodded.

  “My mounting stone they took,” raged Mr. O’Toole, “with malicious intent of putting me afoot.”

  “Afoot?” asked Maxwell.

  “You comprehend most feebly, I see. My mounting stone, up which I must scramble to get astride Old Dobbin. Without a mounting stone there gets no horseback riding and I must trudge afoot unhappily, with much pain and puffing.”

  “I see,” said Maxwell. “As you say, at first I did not comprehend.”

  “Them dirty trolls,” said Mr. O’Toole, grinding his teeth in fury, “at nothing will they stop. After the mounting stone it would have come the castle, piece by piece, stone by stone, until there be no more than the bareness of the rock upon which it once had roosted. It is necessary, in such circumstance, the bud to nip with quick determination.”

  Maxwell jerked his head in a downhill direction. “How did it come out?” he asked.

  “We root them out,” said the goblin with some satisfaction. “They scatter like the quail. We dig them out from under rocks and from hiding in the thickets and then we harness them, like so many mules, of which, indeed, they bear a striking likeness, and they drag the mounting stone, most laboriously, I think, back to where they found it.”

  “They’re getting back at you,” said Maxwell, “for tearing down their bridge.”

  Mr. O’Toole jigged in exasperation. “You are wrong!” he cried. “Out of great and misplaced compassion, we refrained from the tearing of it down. Just two little stones is all. Two tiny little stones, and much effective roaring at them. And then they betook the enchantments off the broomstick and also off the sweet October ale and, being simple souls much given to good nature, we let it go at that.”

  “They took the enchantment off the ale? I would have thought that impossible once certain chemical changes—”

  Mr. O’Toole fixed Maxwell with a look of contempt. “You prate,” he said, “in scientific lingo, which brings no more than errant nonsense. I fail to fathom your engagement in this science when magic you could have for the asking from us and the willingness to learn. Although I must confess the disenchantment of the ale left something for desire. It has a faintly musty touch about the tasting of it.

  “Although,” he said, “it is a notch or two improved upon no ale at all. If you would only join me, we could do a sample of it.”

  “There has been nothing all day long,” said Maxwell, “that sounds as good as that.”

  “Then leave us retire,” cried Mr. O’Toole, “to the drafty halls built so inexpertly by you crazy humans who thought we doted upon ruins, and regale ourselves with foaming mugs of cheer.”

  In the drafty great hall of the castle, Mr. O’Toole drew the foaming mugs from a mighty cask set upon two sawhorses and carried them to the rough-hewn table before the large stone fireplace in which a smouldering and reluctant fire was smoking rather badly.

  “The blasphemy of it,” said Mr. O’Toole, as he lifted his mug, “is that this preposterous outrage of the mounting stone was committed at a time when we goblins were embarked upon a wake.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maxwell said. “A wake, you say. I had not been aware—”

  “Oh, not one of us,” Mr. O’Toole said quickly. “With the possible exception of myself, in disgusting good health is all the goblin tribe. We were in observance of it for the Banshee.”

  “But the Banshee is not dead.”

  “Not dead,” said Mr. O’Toole, “but dying. And, oh, the pity of it. He be the last of a great and noble race in this reservation and the ones still left elsewhere in the world can be counted upon less than the fingers of one hand.”

  XIX

  He lifted the mug and buried his muzzle in it, drinking deep and gustily. When he put it down there was foam upon his whiskers, and fie left it there, not bothering to wipe it off.

  “We die out most notably,” he said, in somber tones. “The planet has been changed. All of us Little Folks and some who are not so little walk down into the valley, where shadows hang so densely, and we are gone from the ken of all living things and that is the end of us. And the very shame of it makes one tremble when he thinks upon it, for we were a goodly people despite our many faults. Even the trolls, before degradation fell upon them, still had a few weak virtues all intact. Although I would proclaim that at the moment they are destitute of virtue. For surely the stealing of a mounting stone is a very lowdown trick and one which clearly demonstrates they are bereft of all nobility of spirit.”

  He put his mug to his mouth again and emptied it in several lusty gulps. He slammed it down on the table and looked at Maxwell’s mug, still full.

  “Drink up,” he urged. “Drink up, then I fill them yet again for a further wetting of the whistle.”

  “You go ahead,” Maxwell told him. “It’s a shame to drink ale the way you do. It Should be tasted and appreciated.”

  Mr. O’Toole shrugged
. “A pig I am, no doubt. But this be disenchanted ale and not one to linger over.”

  Nevertheless he got to his feet and shuffled over to the cask to refill his mug. Maxwell lifted his mug and took a drink. There was a mustiness, as Mr. O’Toole had said, in the flavor of the ale—a tang that tasted not unlike the the way that leaf smoke smelled.

  “Well?” the goblin asked.

  “It has a strange taste to it, but it is palatable.”

  “Some day that troll bridge I will take down,” said Mr. O’Toole, with a surge of sudden wrath. “Stone by stone, with the moss most carefully scraped off to rob the stones of magic, and with a hammer break them in many smallish bits and transport the bits to some high cliff and there fling them far and wide so that in all eternity there can be no harvesting of them. Except,” he said, letting his shoulders droop, “so much hard labor it would be. But one is tempted. This be the smoothest and sweetest ale that was ever brewed and now look at it—scarcely fit for hogs. But it be a terrible sin to waste even such foul-tasting slop if it should be ale.”

  He grabbed the mug and jerked it to his face. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and He did not take down the mug until all the ale was gone.

  “And if I wreak too great a damage to that most foul bridge,” he said, “and should those craven trolls go snivelling to authority, you humans will jerk me on the rug to explain that my thinking is not the way it should be. There is no dignity in the living by the rule. And no joy, either. It was a rotten day when the human race arose.”

  “My friend,” said Maxwell, shaken, “you have not said anything like this to me before.”

  “Nor to any other human,” said the goblin, “and to all the humans in the world, only to you could I display my feeling. But I, perchance, have run off at the mouth exceedingly.”

  “You know well enough,” said Maxwell, “that I’ll not breathe a word of it.”

  “Of course not,” said Mr. O’Toole. “That I did not worry on. You be almost one of us. You’re the closest to a goblin that a human can approach.”

  “I am honored,” Maxwell told him.

  “We are ancient,” said Mr. O’Toole, “more ancient, I must think, than the human mind can wonder. You’re sure you don’t want to polish off that foul and terrible drink and start another one afresh?”

  Maxwell shook his head. “You go ahead and fill your mug up again. I’ll sit here and enjoy mine instead of gulping it.”

  Mr. O’Toole made another trip to the cade and came back with a brimming mug, slapped it on the table and settled himself elaborately and comfortably.

  “Long years gone,” he said, shaking his head in sadness. “So awful long ago. And then a filthy little primate comes along and spoils it all for us.”

  “Long ago,” said Maxwell. “As long as the Jurassic?”

  “You speak conundrums. I do not catch the term. But there were many of us, and many different kinds. And today there be few of us and not all the different kinds. We die out very slowly, but inexorably. A further day will dawn to find no one of us. Then you humans will have it to yourselves.”

  “You are overwrought,” Maxwell cautioned him. “You know that’s not what we want. We have gone to much effort—”

  “Loving effort?” asked the goblin.

  “Yes, I’d even say to much loving effort.”

  Weak tears ran down the goblin’s cheeks and he lifted a hairy, calloused Hand to wipe them.

  “You must pay me slight attention,” he told Maxwell. “I deep am in the dumps. It’s this business of the Banshee.”

  “The Banshee is your friend?” Maxwell asked in some surprise.

  “No friend of mine,” said Mr. O’Toole. “He stands on one side of the pale, I upon the other. An ancient enemy, but still one of us. One of the really old ones. He hung on better than the others. He dies more stubbornly. The others all are dead. And in days like this, differences go swiftly down the drain. We could not sit with him, as conscience would decree, but in the absence of this we pay him the small honor of a wake for him. And then these low-crawling trolls without a flake of honor in them. . . .”

  “You mean no one, no one here on the reservation, could sit the death-watch with the Banshee?”

  Mr. O’Toole shook his head wearily. “No single one of us. It is to the law contrary, to the old custom in violation. I cannot make you understand—he is outside the pale.”

  “But he is all alone.”

  “In a thorn bush,” agreed the goblin. “Close beside the hut that was his domicile.”

  “A thorn bush?”

  The goblin said, “In the thorns dwell magic, and in the tree itself.”

  He choked and grabbed hastily at the mug and raised it to his mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  Maxwell reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the photo of the lost Lambert that hung on Nancy Clayton’s wall.

  “Mr. O’Toole,” he said, “there’s something I must show you.” The goblin set down the mug. “Let me see it, then,” he said. “All this beating amongst the bushes, when there was something that you had.”

  He reached for the photo, bending his head to puzzle over it.

  “The trolls,” he said, “of course. But these others I do not recognize. As if I should, but fail. There be old, old stories. . . .”

  “Oop saw the picture. You know of Oop, of course.”

  “The great barbarian who claims to be your friend.”

  “He is my friend,” said Maxwell. “And Oop recalls these things. They are old ones from the ancient days.”

  “But what magic is called upon to get a picture of them?”

  “That I don’t know. That’s a picture of a painting, painted by a man many years ago.”

  “By what means?”

  “I do not know,” said Maxwell. “I think that he was there.”

  Mr. O’Toole picked up his mug and saw that it was empty. He tottered to the cask and filled it. He came back with his drink and picked up the photo, looking at it carefully, although somewhat blearily.

  “I know not,” he finally said. “There were others of us. Many different ones no longer present. We here are the tail end of a noble population.”

  He pushed the photo back across the table.

  “Maybe the Banshee,” he suggested. “The Banshee’s years are beyond all telling.”

  “But the Banshee’s dying.”

  “That he is,” said Mr. O’Toole, “and an evil day it is and a bitter day for him, with no one to keep the death watch.”

  He lifted his mug. “Drink up,” he said. “Drink up. Can one drink enough it may not be so bad.”

  XX

  Maxwell came around the corner of the tumbledown shack and saw the thorn tree standing to one side of it. There was something strange about the tree. It looked as if a cloud of darkness had settled along its vertical axis, making it appear to have a massive bole, out of which emerged short and slender thorn-armed twigs. And if what O’Toole had said was true, Maxwell told himself, that dark cloud clustered in the tree must be the dying Banshee.

  He walked slowly across the intervening space and stopped a few feet from the tree. The black cloud moved restlessly, like a cloud of slowly roiling smoke.

  “You are the Banshee?” Maxwell asked the tree.

  The Banshee said, “You’ve come too late if you wish to talk with me.”

  “I did not come to talk,” said Maxwell. “I came to sit with you.”

  “Sit then. It will not be for long.”

  Maxwell sat down upon the ground and pulled his knees up close against his chest. He put his hands down beside him, palms flat against the mat of dry and browning grass. Below him the autumn valley stretched to the far horizon of the hills north of the river—unlike the hills of this southern shore, but gentle, rolling hills that went toward the sky in slanted’, staircase fashion.

  A flurry of wings, swept across the ridge behind him, and a flock of blackbirds went careening through the blue haze that h
ung against the steep ravine that went plunging downward from the ridge. But except for that single instant of wings beating in the air, there was soft and gentle silence. It held no violence and no threat, a dreaming silence in which the hills stood quiet.

  “The others did not come,” the Banshee said. “I thought, at first, they might. For a moment I thought they might forget and come. There need be no distinction among us now. We stand as one, all beaten to the self-same level. But the old conventions are not broken yet The old-time customs hold.”

  “I talked with the goblins,” Maxwell told him. “They hold a wake for you. The O’Toole is grieving and drinking to blunt the edge of grief.”

  “You are not of my people,” the Banshee said. “You intrude upon me. Yet you say you come to sit with me. How does it happen that you do this?”

  Maxwell lied. He could do nothing else. He could not, he told himself, tell this dying thing he had come for information.

  “I have worked with your people,” he said, “and I’ve become much concerned with them.”

  “You are the Maxwell,” said the Banshee. “I have heard of you.”

  “How do you feel?” asked Maxwell. “Is there anything I can do for you? Something that you need?”

  “No,” the Banshee said. “I am beyond all needing. I feel almost nothing. That is the trouble, that I feel nothing. My dying is different than your dying. It is scarcely physical. Energy drains out from me and there’s finally nothing left. Like a flickering light that finally gutters out.”

  “I am sorry,” Maxwell said. “If talking hastens. . . .”

  “Talking might hasten it a little, but I no longer mind. And I am not sorry. I have no regret.

  I am almost the last of us. There are three of us left, if you count me, and I am not worth the counting. Out of the thousands of us, only two are left.”

  “But there are the goblins and the trolls and fairies. . . .”

  “You do not understand,” the Banshee said. “No one has ever told you, and you never thought to ask. Those you name are the later ones, the ones that came after us, when the planet was no longer young. We were colonists, surely you know that.”