Two days, he thought. Had it been only two days since he had returned to Earth to find Inspector Drayton waiting? So much had happened that it seemed much longer.
He tried to summon up a hatred of the Wheelers, but he found there was no hatred. They were too alien, too far removed from mankind, to inspire a hatred. They were abstractions of evil rather than actual evil beings—although that distinction made them no less dangerous. That other Peter Maxwell had surely been murdered by the Wheelers, for when he had been found there had been a curious, repulsive odor lingering, and now, since that moment in Sharp’s office, Maxwell knew what that odor was. Murdered because the Wheelers had believed that the first Maxwell to return had come from the crystal planet and murder had been a way to stop him from interfering with the deal with Time for the Artifact. But when the second Maxwell had appeared, the Wheelers must have been afraid of a second murder. That was why, Maxwell told himself, Mr. Marmaduke had tried to buy him off.
And there was the matter of a certain Monty Churchill, Maxwell reminded himself. When this all was finished, no matter how it might come out, he would hunt up Churchill and make certain that the score he owed him was all evened out.
They came up to the bridge and walked under it and halted. “All right, you trashy trolls,” Mr. O’Toole yelled at the silent stone. “There is a group of us out here to hold conversation with you.”
“You hush up,” Maxwell told the goblin. “You keep out of this. You and the trolls do not get along.”
“Who,” the O’Toole demanded, “along can get with them? Obstinate things they are and without a shred of honor and of common sense bereft.”
“Just keep still,” said Maxwell. “Don’t say another word.”
They stood, all of them in the silence of the coming dawn, and finally a squeaky voice spoke to them from the area underneath the far end of the bridge.
“Who is there?” the voice asked. “If you come to bully us, bullied we’ll not be. The loudmouthed O’Toole for all these years has bullied us and nagged us. No more we’ll have of it.”
“My name is Maxwell,” Maxwell told the speaker. “I do not come to bully you. I come to beg for help.”
“Maxwell? The good friend of O’Toole?”
“The good friend of all of you. Of every one of you. I sat with the dying Banshee, taking the place of those Who would not come to see out his final moments.”
“But drink with O’Toole, you do. And talk with him, oh, yes. And give credence to his lies!”
The O’Toole strode forward, bouncing with wrath. “That down your throats I’ll stuff!” he screamed. “Let me get my paws but once upon their filthy guzzles. . . .”
His words broke off abruptly as Sharp reached out and, grabbing him by the slack of his trouser-seat, lifted him and held him, gurgling and choking in his rage.
“You go ahead,” Sharp said to Maxwell. “If this little pipsqueak so much as parts his lips, I’ll find a pool and dunk him.”
Sylvester sidled over to Sharp, thrust out his head and sniffed delicately at the dangling O’Toole. O’Toole batted at the cat with windmilling arms. “Get him out of here,” he shrieked.
“He thinks you’re a mouse,” said Oop. “He’s trying to make up his mind if you are worth the trouble.”
Sharp hauled off and kicked Sylvester in the ribs. Sylvester shied off, snarling.
“Harlow Sharp,” said Carol, starting forward, “don’t you ever dare to do a thing like that again. If you do, I’ll—”
“Shut up!” Maxwell yelled exasperated. “Shut up, all of you. The dragon is up there fighting for his life, and you stand here, wrangling.”
They all fell silent. Some of them stepped back. Maxwell waited for a moment, then spoke to the trolls. “I don’t know what’s gone on before,” he said. “I don’t know what the trouble is. But we need your help and we’re about to get it. I promise you fair dealing, but I also promise that if you aren’t reasonable we’re about to see what a couple of sticks of high explosive will do to this bridge of yours.”
A feeble, squeaky voice issued from the bridge. “But all we ever wanted, all we ever asked, was for that bigmouthed O’Toole to make for us a cask of sweet October ale.”
Maxwell turned around. “Is that right?” he asked.
Sharp set O’Toole back upon his feet so that he could answer.
“It’s the breaking of a precedent!” howled O’Toole. “That is what it is. From time immemorial us goblins are the only ones who ever brewed the gladsome ale. And drink it by ourselves. Make we cannot more than we can drink. And make it for the trolls, then the fairies will be wanting. . . .”
“You know damn well,” said Oop, “that the fairies would never drink the ale. All they drink is milk. The brownies too.”
“Athirst you would have us all,” screamed the goblin. “Hard labor it is for us to make only what we need and much time and thought and effort!”
“If it’s a simple matter of production,” suggested Sharp, “we certainly could help you.”
Mr. O’Toole bounded up and down in wrath. “And the bugs!” he shouted. “What about the bugs? Exclude them from the ale I know you would when it was brewing. All nasty sanitary. To make October ale, bugs you must have falling into it and all other matters of great uncleanliness or the flavor you will miss.”
“We’ll put in bugs,” said Oop. “We’ll go out and catch a bucket full of them and dump them into it.”
The O’Toole was beside himself with anger, his face a flaming purple. “Understand you do not,” he screamed at them. “Bugs you do not go dumping into it. Bugs fall into it with wondrous selectivity!”
His words cut off in a gurgling shriek, and Carol called out sharply, “Sylvester, cut that out!”
The O’Toole dangled, wailing and flailing his arms, from Sylvester’s mouth. Sylvester held his head high go that Mr. O’Toole’s feet could not reach the ground.
Oop rolling on the ground in laughter, beating his hands upon the earth. “He thinks O’Toole’s a mouse!” Oop yelled. “Look at that putty cat! He caught hisself a mouse!”
Sylvester was being gentle about it. He was not hurting O’Toole, except his dignity. He was holding him lightly in his mouth, with the two fangs in his upper jaws closing neatly about his middle.
Sharp hauled off to kick the cat.
“No,” Carol yelled, “don’t you dare do that!”
Sharp hesitated.
“It’s all right, Harlow,” Maxwell said. “Let him keep O’Toole. Surely he deserves something for what he did for us back there in the office.”
“We’ll do it!” O’Toole yelled, frantically. “We’ll make them their cask of ale. We’ll make two casks of it.”
“Three,” said the squeaky voice coming from the bridge.
“All right, three,” agreed the goblin.
“No weaseling out of it later on?” asked Maxwell.
“Us goblins never weasel,” said O’Toole.
“All right, Harlow,” said Maxwell. “Go ahead and belt him.”
Sharp squared off to kick. Sylvester dropped O’Toole and slunk off a pace or two.
The trolls came pouring from the bridge and went scurrying up the hillside, yelping with excitement.
The humans began scrambling up the slope, following the trolls.
Ahead of Maxwell, Carol tripped and fell. Maxwell stopped and lifted her. She jerked away from him and turned to him a face flaring with anger. “Don’t you ever touch me!” she said. “Don’t even speak to me. You told Harlow to go ahead and kick Sylvester. You yelled at me. You told me to shut up.”
She turned then and went scrambling up the hill, moving quickly out of sight.
Maxwell stood befuddled for a moment, then began the climb, skirting boulders, grabbing at bushes to pull himself along.
Up on the top of the hill he heard wild cheering and off to his right a great black globe, with its wheels spinning madly, plummeted out of the sky and crashed into the woods. He
stopped and looked up and saw, through the treetops, two globes streaking through the sky on collision courses. They did not swerve or slacken speed. They came together and exploded on impact. He stood and watched the shattered pieces flying. In a few seconds there were pattering sounds among the leaves as the debris came raining down.
The cheering still was going on atop the bluff and far off, near die top of the hill that rose beyond the ravine, something that he heard, but did not see, came plunging to the earth.
There was no one else in sight as he began the climb again.
It was all over now, he told himself. The trolls had done their work, and now the dragon could come down. He grinned wryly to himself. For years he’d hunted dragons, and Here finally was the dragon, but something more, perhaps, than he had imagined. What could the dragon be, he wondered. And why had it been enclosed within the Artifact, or made into the Artifact, or whatever might have been done with it?
Funny thing about the Artifact, he thought—resisting everything, rejecting everything until that moment when he had fastened the interpreting mechanism on his head to examine it. What had happened to release the dragon from the Artifact? Clearly the mechanism had had a part to play in the doing of it, but there still was no way of knowing what might have happened. Although the people on the crystal planet certainly would know, one of the many things they knew, one of the many arts they held which still lay outside the knowledge of others in the galaxy. Had the interpreter turned up in his luggage by design rather than by accident? Had it been planted there for the very purpose for which it had been used? Was it an interpreter, at all? Or was it something else fashioned in a manner that resembled an interpreter?
He recalled that at one time he had wondered if the Artifact might not once have served as a god for the Little Folk, or for those strange creatures which early in the history of the Earth had been associated with the Little Folk? And had he been right, he wondered. Was the dragon a god from some olden time?
He began the climb again, but went slower now, for there was no need to hurry. It was the first time since he had returned from the crystal planet that there was no urgency.
He was somewhat more than halfway up the hill when he heard the music, so faint at first, so muted, that he could not be sure he heard it.
He stopped to listen, and it was surely music.
The sun had just moved the top part of its disk over the horizon. A sheet of blinding light struck the treetops on the hill above him, so that they blazed with autumn color. But the hillside that he climbed still lay in morning shadow.
He listened and the music was like the sound of silver water running over happy stones. Unearthly music. Fairy music.
And that was what it was. On the dancing green off to his left a fairy orchestra was playing.
A fairy orchestra and fairies dancing on the green! It was something that He Had never seen, and here was a chance to see it. He turned to his left and made his way, as silently as he could, toward the dancing green.
Please, he whispered to himself, please don’t go away. Don’t be frightened by me. Please stay and let me see you.
He was close now. Just beyond that boulder. And the music kept on playing.
He crawled by inches around the boulder, on guard against making any sound.
And then he saw.
The orchestra sat in a row upon a log at the edge of the green and played away, the morning light flashing off the iridescent wings and the shiny instruments.
But there were no fairies dancing on the green. Instead there were two others he never would have guessed. Two such simple souls as might dance to fairy music.
Facing one another, dancing to the music of the fairy orchestra, were Ghost and Shakespeare.
XXXI
The dragon perched upon the castle wall, its multi-colored body glittering in the sun. Far below, in its Valley, the Wisconsin river, blue as a forgotten summer sky, flowed between the shores of flaming forests. From the castle yard came sounds of revelry as the goblins and the trolls, for the moment with animosity laid aside, drank great tankards of October ale, banging the tankards on the tables that had been carried from the great hall and singing ancient songs that had been composed long before there had been such a thing as Man.
Maxwell sat upon a deep-buried boulder and gazed out across the valley. A dozen feet away the edge of the bluff cut off, above a hundred feet of cliff. On the edge of the cliff grew a twisted cedar tree, bent by the winds that had howled across the valley for uncounted years, its bark a powdery silver, its foilage a light and fragrant green. Even from where he sat, Maxwell could catch the sharp tang of the foilage.
It all had come out right, he told himself. There was no Artifact to trade for the knowledge of the crystal planet—although there was the dragon; and the dragon, after all, probably had been what the people on that planet wanted. But even if this should not prove to be the truth, the Wheelers had lost out. And in the long run that might be more important than the acquiring of the knowledge.
It all had worked out okay. Better than he could have hoped. Except that now everyone was sore at him. Carol was angry at him because he’d told Harlow to go ahead and kick Sylvester and because he’d told her to shut up. O’Toole was sore at him because he’d abandoned him to Sylvester and thereby forced him to give in to the trolls. Harlow more than likely still was plenty burned up because he had messed up the deal for the Artifact and because of all the busted pieces in the museum. But maybe the fact that he’d got Shakespeare back might make up for some of that. And there was Drayton, of course, who still might want to question him, and Longfellow, at Administration, who wouldn’t like him any better no matter what had happened.
Sometimes, he told himself, it didn’t pay to care too much about anything or to fight for anything.
Maybe it was the ones like Nancy Clayton who really had it made—featherheaded Nancy with her famous house guests and her fabulous parties.
Something brushed against Him, and he turned to see what it might be. Sylvester readied out a rough and rasping tongue and began to wash his face.
“Cut it out,” said Maxwell. “That tongue of yours takes off hide.”
Sylvester purred contentedly and settled down beside him, leaning hard against him. The two of them sat and gazed across the valley.
“You got an easy life,” Maxwell told the cat. “You don’t have any problems. You don’t have to worry.”
A foot crunched on some stones.
A voice said, “You’ve kidnapped my cat. Can I sit down and share him?”
“Sure, sit down,” said Maxwell. “I’ll move over for you. I thought you never wanted to speak to me again.”
“You were a nasty person down there,” said Carol. “I didn’t like you much. But I suppose you had to be nasty.”
A black cloud came to rest inside the cedar tree.
Carol gasped and shrank against Maxwell. He put out an arm and held her close.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It is just a Banshee.”
“But he hasn’t any body. He hasn’t any face. He is just a cloud.”
“That is not remarkable,” the Banshee told her. “That is what we are, the two of us that are left. Great dirty dishcloths flapping in the sky. And you need not be frightened, for the other human is a friend of ours.”
“I wasn’t a friend of the third one,” said Maxwell. “Nor was the human race. He sold out to the Wheelers.”
“And yet you sat with him, when no one else would do it.”
“Yes, I did that. Even your worst enemy could demand that you do that.”
“Then, I think,” the Banshee said, “that you can understand a little. The Wheelers, after all, were us. Still are us, perhaps. And ancient ties die hard.”
“I think I do understand,” said Maxwell. “What can I do for you?”
“I only came,” the Banshee told him, “to tell you that the place you call the crystal planet has been notified.”
“A
nd they want the dragon?” Maxwell asked. “You’ll have to give us the coordinates. . . .”
“The coordinates,” said the Banshee, will be given to Transportation Central. You will want to go there, you and many others, to transfer the data. But the dragon stays on Earth, here on.”
“I don’t understand,” said Maxwell. “They wanted—”
“The Artifact,” the Banshee said, “to set the dragon free. He had been caged too long.”
“Since the Jurassic,” said Maxwell. “I agree. That is far too long.”
“But we did not plan so long,” the Banshee said. “You moved Him before we could set Him free, and we thought that we had lost him. The Artifact was only to preserve and hide him until the colony on Earth could become established, until it could protect him. . . .”
“Protect him? Why did he need protection?”
“Because,” the Banshee said, “he is the last of his race and therefore very precious. He is the last of the—I find it hard to say—you have creatures you call dogs and cats?”
“Yes,” said Carol. “We have one of them right here.”
“Pets,” the Banshee said. “And yet much more than pets. Creatures that have walked the Earth with you from the very early days. The dragon is the pet, the last pet, of the people of the crystal planet.”
“The goblins will take care of him,” said Carol. “And the trolls and fairies and all the rest of them. They will be proud of him. They will spoil him rotten.”
“And the humans, too?”
“And the humans, too,” she said.
They did not see him go. But He was no longer there.
A pet, thought Maxwell. Not a god, but a simple pet. And yet, perhaps, not so simple as it sounded. When men had first made the biomechs, what had they created? Not other men, at least at first, not livestock, not freaks engineered to specific purposes. They had created pets.
Carol stirred against his arm. “What are you thinking, Pete?”
“About a date,” he said. “Yes, I guess I was thinking of a dinner date with you. We had one once, but it never quite came off. Would you like to try again?”
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