Clifford Simak - The Goblin Reservation

“And you told it the price was the Artifact.”

“Of course I told it that. For at the time I had not been told of you. It was only later I was told I should, after a suitable time, communicate the price to you.”

“And, of course,” said Maxwell, “you were about to do this?”

“Yes,” said the Banshee, “I was about to do it. And now I’ve done it and the matter’s closed.”

“You can tell me one thing more. What is the Artifact?”

“That,” the Banshee said, “I cannot do.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Won’t,” the Banshee said.

Sold out, Maxwell told himself. The human race sold out by this dying thing which, despite what it might say, had never meant to communicate the price to him. This thing which through long millennia had nursed cold hatred against the human race. And now that it was gone beyond all reaching, telling him and mocking him so that he might know how the humans had been sold out, so that the human race might know, now that it was too late, exactly what had happened.

“And you told the Wheeler about me as well,” he said. “That’s how Churchill happened to be waiting at the station when I returned to Earth. He said he’d been on a trip, but there had been no trip.”

He surged angrily to his feet. “And what about the one of me who died?”

He swung upon the tree and the tree was empty. The dark cloud that had seethed around its trunk was gone. The branches stood out in sharp and natural relief against the western sky.

Gone, Maxwell thought. Not dead, but gone. The substance of an elemental creature gone back to the elements, the unimaginable bonds that had held it together in strange semblance of life, finally weakening to let the last of it slip away, blowing off into the air and sunlight like a pinch of thrown dust.

Alive, the Banshee had been a hard thing to get along with. Dead, it was no easier. For a short space of time he had felt compassion for it, as a man must feel for anything that dies. But the compassion, he knew, had been wasted, for the Banshee must have died in silent laughter at the human race.

There was just one hope, to persuade Time to hold up the sale of the Artifact so he could have the time to contact Arnold and tell his story to him, persuade him, somehow, that what he told was true. A story, Maxwell realized, that now became even more fantastic than it had been before.

He turned about and started down the ravine. Before he reached the woods, he stopped and looked back up the slope. The thorn tree stood squat against the sky, sturdy and solid, braced solid in the soil.

When he passed the fairy dancing green a gang of trolls were grumpily at work, raking and smoothing out the ground, laying new sod to replace that which had been gouged out by the bouncing stone. Of the stone there was no sign.

Maxwell was halfway back to Wisconsin Campus when Ghost materialized and took the seat next to him.

“I have a message from Oop,” he said, ignoring any preliminary approach to conversation. “You are not to return to the shack. The newspaper people seem to have sniffed you out. When they came to inquire, Oop went into action, without, I would guess, too much thought or judgment. He put the bum’s rush on them, but they’re still hanging around, on the lookout for you.”

“Thanks,” said Maxwell. “I appreciate being told. Although as a matter of fact, I don’t imagine it makes too much difference now.”

“Events,” asked Ghost, “do not march too well?”

“They barely march at all,” Maxwell told him. He hesitated, then said, “I suppose Oop has told you what is going on.”

“Oop and I are as one,” said Ghost. “Yes, of course he’s told me. He seemed to take it for granted that you knew he would. But you may rest assured…”

“It’s not that,” said Maxwell. “I was only wondering if I had to recite it all again for you. You know, then, that I went to the reservation to check on the Lambert painting.”

“Yes,” said Ghost. “The one that Nancy Clayton has.”

“I have a feeling,” Maxwell told him, “that I may have found out more than I had expected to. I did find out one thing that doesn’t help at all. It was the Banshee who tipped off the Wheeler about the price the crystal planet wanted. The Banshee was supposed to tell me, but he told the Wheeler instead. He claims he told the Wheeler before he knew about me, but I have some doubt of that. The Banshee was dying when he told me, but that doesn’t mean that he told the truth. He always was a slippery customer.”

“The Banshee dying?”

“He’s dead now. I sat with him until he died. I didn’t show him the photo of the painting. I didn’t have the heart to intrude upon him.”

“But despite this he told you about the Wheeler.”

“Only to let me know that he had hated the human race since it first began its evolutionary climb. And to let me know that he was finally getting even. He would have liked to have said that the goblins and the rest of the Little Folk hated us as well, but he never quite got around to that. Knowing, perhaps, that I would not believe it. Although something that the O’Toole had said earlier made me realize that there probably is some ancestral resentment. Resentment, but probably not any real hatred. But the Banshee did confirm that a deal is being made for the Artifact and that the Artifact actually is the price for the crystal planet. I thought so from the first, of course. And what the Wheeler said last night made it almost a certainty. Although I couldn’t be absolutely sure, for it doesn’t seem that the Wheeler himself is actually sure of the situation. If he were, what would have been the point of waylaying me and offering me a job? It sounded to me as if he were trying to buy me off, as if he were afraid that there was something I could do to louse up his deal.”

“It looks fairly hopeless, then,” Ghost observed. “My good friend, I am very sorry for this. Is there anything that we can do to help-Oop and me and perhaps even that girl who drank with you and Oop so staunchly. The one who has the cat.”

“It looks hopeless,” Maxwell told him, “but there are a couple of things that I still can do-go to Harlow Sharp at Time and try to convince him to hold up the deal, then crash in a door or two up at Administration and back Arnold into a corner. If I can talk Arnold into duplicating the Wheeler’s offer in funding for Harlow ’s Time projects, I am sure that Harlow will turn down the Wheeler’s offer.”

“You will make a noble effort, I am sure,” said Ghost, “but I fear for the results. Not from Harlow Sharp, for he’s a friend of yours, but President Arnold is a friend of no one. And he will not relish the breaking down of doors.”

“You know what I think,” said Maxwell. “I think that you are right. But you can’t tell until you try. It may be that Arnold will have a lapse of moral fiber and will, for once, set prejudice and stuff-shirtedness aside.”

“I must warn you,” said Ghost. “Harlow Sharp may have little time for you or for anyone. He has worries. Shakespeare arrived this morning-”

“Shakespeare!” yelled Maxwell. “For the love of God, I’d forgotten about him coming. But I do remember he speaks tomorrow night. Of all the lousy breaks. It would have to be at a time like this.”

“It would seem,” said Ghost, “that William Shakespeare is not any easy man to handle. He wanted at once to go out and have a look at this new age of which he’d been told so much. Time had a rough time persuading him to change his Elizabethan dress for what we wear today, but they positively refused to let him go until he agreed to it. And now Time is sweating out what might happen to him. They have to keep him in tow, but they can’t do anything that will get his back up. They have sold the hall down to the last inch of standing room and they can’t take the chance that anything will happen.”