Clifford Simak - Goblin Reservation

Inspector Drayton sat, solidly planted behind the desk, and waited. He was a raw-boned man with a face that looked as if it might have been hacked, by a dull hatchet, out of a block of gnarled wood. His eyes were points of flint and at times they seemed to glitter, and he was angry and upset. But such a man, Peter Maxwell knew, would never give way to any kind of anger. There was, behind that anger, a bulldog quality that would go plodding on, undisturbed by anger.

And this was just the situation, Maxwell told himself, that he had hoped would not come about. Although, as now was evident, it had been too much to hope. He had known, of course, that his failure to arrive at his proper destination, some six weeks before; would have created some consternation back here on the Earth; the thought that he might be able to slip home unobserved had not been realistic. And now here he was, facing this man across the desk and he'd have to take it easy.

He said to the man behind the desk: "I don't believe I entirely understand why my return to Earth should be a matter for Security. My name is Peter Maxwell and I'm a member of the faculty of the College of Supernatural Phenomena on Wisconsin Campus. You have seen my papers..."

"I am quite satisfied," said Drayton, "as to who you are. Puzzled, perhaps, but entirely satisfied. It's something else that bothers me. Would you mind, Professor Maxwell, telling me exactly where you've been?"

"There's not very much that I can tell you," Peter Maxwell said. "I was on a planet, but I don't know its name or its coordinates. It may be closer than a light-year or out beyond the Rim."

"In any event," said Drayton, "you did not arrive at the destination you indicated on your travel ticket."

"I did not," said Maxwell.

"Can you explain what happened?"

"I can only guess. I had thought that perhaps my wave pattern was diverted, perhaps intercepted and diverted. At first I thought there had been transmitter error, but that seems impossible. The transmitters have been in use for hundreds of years. All the hugs should have been ironed out of them by now."

"You mean that you were kidnapped?"

"If you want to put it that way."

"And still will tell me nothing?"

"I have explained there's not much to tell."

"Could this planet have anything to do with the Wheelers?"

Maxwell shook his head. "I couldn't say for sure, but I don't believe it did. Certainly there were none of them around. There was no indication they had anything to do with it."

"Professor Maxwell, have you ever seen a Wheeler?"

"Once. Several years ago. One of them spent a month or two at Time. I caught sight of it one day."

"So you would know a Wheeler, if you saw one?"

"Yes, indeed," said Maxwell.

"I see you started out for one of the planets in the Coonskin system."

"There was the rumor of a dragon," Maxwell told him. "Not substantiated. In fact, the evidence was quite sketchy. But I decided it might be worth investigating..."

Drayton cocked an eyebrow. "A dragon?" he demanded.

"I suppose," said Maxwell; "that it may be hard for someone outside my field to grasp the importance of a dragon. But the fact of the matter is that there is no scrap of evidence to suggest such a creature at any time existed. This despite the fact that the dragon legend is solidly embedded in the folklore of the Earth and some of the other planets. Fairies, goblins, trolls, banshees-we have all of these, in the actual flesh, but no trace of a dragon. The funny thing about it is that the legend here on Earth is not basically a human legend. The Little Folk, as well, have the dragon legend. I sometimes think they may have been the ones who transmitted it to us. But the legend only. There is no evidence..."

He stopped, feeling a little silly. What could this stolid policeman who sat across the desk care about the dragon legend?

"I'm sorry, Inspector," he said. "I let my enthusiasm for a favorite subject run away with me."

"I have heard it said that the dragon legend might have risen from ancestral memories of the dinosaur."

"I have heard it, too," said Maxwell, "but it seems impossible. The dinosaurs were extinct long before mankind had evolved."

"Then the Little Folk..."

"Possibly," said Maxwell, "but it seems unlikely. I know the Little Folk and have talked with them about it. They are ancient, certainly much more ancient than we humans, but there is no indication they go back that far. Or if they do, they have no memory of it. And I would think that their legends and folk tales would easily carry over some millions of years. They are extremely long-lived, not quite immortal, but almost, and in a situation such as that, mouth-to-mouth tradition would be most persistent."

Drayton gestured, brushing away the dragons and the Little Folk. "You started for the Coonskin," he said, "and you didn't get there."

"That is right. There was this other planet. A roofed-in, crystal planet."

"Crystal?"

"Some sort of stone. Quartz, perhaps. Although I can't be sure. It could be metal. There was some metal there."

Drayton asked smoothly. "You wouldn't have known, when you started out, that you'd wind up on this planet?"

"If it's collusion you have in mind," said Maxwell "you're very far afield. I was quite surprised. But it seems you aren't. You were waiting here for me."

"Not particularly surprised," said Drayton. "It has happened twice before."

"Then you probably know about the planet."

"Nothing about it," said Drayton. "Simply that there's a planet out there somewhere, operating an unregistered transmitter and receiver, and communicating by an unlisted signal. When the operator here at Wisconsin Station picked up their signal for transmittal, he signaled them to wait, that the receivers all were busy. Then got in touch with me."

"The other two?"

"Both of them right here. Both tabbed for Wisconsin Station."

"But if they got back..."

"That's the thing," said Drayton. "They didn't. Oh, I guess you could say they did, but we couldn't talk with them. The wave pattern turned out faulty. They were put back together wrong. They were all messed up. Both of them were aliens, but so tangled up we had a hard time learning who they might have been. We're still not positive."

"Dead?"

"Dead? Certainly. A rather frightful business. You're a lucky man."

Maxwell, with some difficulty, suppressed a shudder. "Yes, I suppose I am," he said.

"You'd think," said Drayton, "that anyone who messed around with matter transmission would make sure they knew how it was done. There's no telling how many they may have picked up who came out wrong in their receiving station."

"But you would know," Maxwell pointed out. "You'd know if there had been any losses. A station would report back immediately if a traveler failed to arrive on schedule."

"That's the funny thing about it," Drayton told him. "There have been no losses. We're pretty sure the two aliens who came back dead to us got where they were going, for there's no one missing."

"But I started out for Coonskin. Surely they reported..."

Then he stopped as the thought struck him straight between the eyes. Drayton nodded slowly. "I thought you would catch on. Peter Maxwell got to the Coonskin system and came back to Earth almost a month ago."

"There must be some mistake," Maxwell protested weakly.

For it was unthinkable that there should be two of him, that another Peter Maxwell, identical in all details, existed on the Earth.

"No mistake," said Drayton. "Not the way we have it figured. This other planet doesn't divert the pattern. What it does is copy it."

"Then there could be two of me! There could be..."