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 be could not, for the life of him, remember packing it. But there it was and 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. Although, he realized, it was not good evidence. It was just a gadget that had an ordinary look about it, although it might not, he reminded himself, seem so ordinary if someone poked around in the mechanism of it.
A light tapping came from somewhere and Maxwell, surprised by so small a noise, stiffened and held himself rigid, listening. Perhaps a windblown branch, he thought, tapping on the roof, although it had a slightly different sound than 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, or thought they'd tracked him down, and if that should be the case, it might be best to leave the door unanswered. But the tapping at the door, it seemed to him, was not boisterous enough, not demanding enough, for a newsman, or several newsmen, 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 their presence, or who, for one reason or another, was not quite sure of purpose. And if it were newsmen, Maxwell realized, it would do no good not to let them in, for in a little while they'd try the door and find it open and then come bursting in.
The tapping, which had stopped for a moment, 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 and 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 thoughtful person. She commissioned me to say further." "Go ahead," said Maxwell.
"There will be wheeled vehicle 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.
14
"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 of 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 OK 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 and 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 she 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 mid-stride, 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 are out 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 it off, but it didn't go away. It stay
ed, 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 run. 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 imprisoned 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 be 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 she has."
"Then, perhaps, you should be out with the other guests."
"I pleaded tiredness," said Mr. Marmaduke. "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 intrigue.
"There is a subject we can talk about," said Mr. Marmaduke, "with some profit, I presume, to the both of us. You are looking for a buyer, I believe, for a large commodity. I might have some passing interest in that 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 at least have 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. I am acquainted with the terms."
"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."
"I would imagine," said Maxwell bleakly, "that it might be a good commission."
"We had in mind," said Mr. Marmaduke, "of naming you—shall we say librarian?—of the commodity we purchase. There will be much to do working out the various commodities and codifying them. For work of this sort we will need a creature such as you, and I imagine that you might find the work highly interesting. And the salary—Professor Maxwell, we pray you name the salary and the conditions of employment."
"I would have to think about it."
"By all means," said Mr. Marmaduke. "In a procedure such as this, a little thought is good. You will find us most disposed to generosity."
"That's not what I meant," said Maxwell. "I'll have to think about the deal. Whether I'd be willing to arrange a sale for you."
"You doubt, perhaps, our worthiness to purchase the commodity?"
"That might be it," said Maxwell.
"Professor Maxwell," said the Wheeler, "it would be advisable for you to lay aside your doubts. It is for the best that you entertain no doubt of us at all. For we are most determined that we shall obtain what you have to offer. So, in the best of grace, you should deal with us."
"Whether I want to or not?" asked Maxwell.
"I," said Mr. Marmaduke, "would have not put it quite so bluntly. But you state it most correctly."
"You are not in the best position," Maxwell told him, "to speak in that tone of voice."
"You are not aware of the position that we hold," the Wheeler said. "Your knowledge goes out to only a certain point in space. You cannot know what lies beyond that point."
There was something in the words, something in the way that they were said, that sent a chill through Maxwell, as if from some unknown quarter of the universe a sharp, frigid blast of wind had blown through the room.
Your knowledge goes only to a certain point in space, Mr. Marmaduke had said, and what lay beyond that point? No one could know, of course, except that in certain areas beyond the shadowy frontier of man's probing it was known the Wheelers had staked out an empire. And seeping across that frontier came horror stories, such tales as any frontier might inspire, stemming from man's wonder concerning that unknown which lay just a little way ahead.
There had been little contact with the Wheelers and there was almost nothing known of them—and that in itself was bad. There was no thrusting out of hands, no gestures of goodwill, either from the Wheelers or from the humans and their friends and allies. The frontier lay there, in that one great sector out in space, a silent, sullen line that neither side had crossed.
"I would be better able to come to some decision," Maxwell said, "if my knowledge did extend, if we could know more about you."
"You know that we are bugs," said Mr. Marmaduke, and the words fairly dripped with scorn. "You are intolerant—”
"Not intolerant," said Maxwell angrily, "and we do not think of you as bugs. We know you are what we would call hive mechanisms. We know each of you is a colony of creatures similar to the life forms that here on Earth we think of as insects, and that sets us apart from you, of course, but no more distant from us than many other creatures from many other stars. I do not like the word 'intolerant,' Mr. Marmaduke, because it implies that there is ground for tolerance and there is no such thing—not for you, nor me, nor any other creature in the universe."
He found that he was shaking with his anger and he wondered why he should suddenly become so angry at a single word. He could remain calm at the thought of the Wheeler buying the knowledge of the crystal planet, then flare with sudden anger at one specific word. Perhaps because, he told himself, with so many different races who must live together, both tolerance and intolerance had become dirty words.
"You argue well and amiably," said Mr. Marmaduke, "and you may not be intolerant—”
"Even were there such a thing as intolerance," said Maxwell, "I cannot understand why you'd resent it so. It would be a reflection upon the one who had exhibited it rather than upon the one toward whom it was directed. Not only a reflection upon good manners, but upon one's basic knowledge. There can be nothing quite so stupid as intolerance."
"Then if not intolerance," asked the Wheeler, "what makes you hesitate?"
"I would have to know how you meant to use the commodity. I would want to know your purpose. I would need to know a great deal more about you."
"So that you could judge?"
"I don't know," said Maxwell bitterly. "How can one judge a situation such as this?"
"We talk too much," said Mr. Marmaduke. "And the talk is meaningless. I perceive you have no intention to make a deal with us."
"At the moment," Maxwell told him, "I would say that you were right."
"Then," said Mr. Marmaduke, "we must find another way. You will cause us, by your refusal, a great deal of time and trouble and we'll be most ungrateful to you."
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