"Different from what?"
"Different from the other creatures Lambert usually painted."
"I didn't know," she said, "you were a Lambert expert."
"I'm not," he said. "I went to the library this morning, after I learned about this party and the painting Nancy had and hunted up a book that had plates of his paintings."
"But what if they were different?" Carol asked. "A painter surely has a right to paint anything he wants to."
"Of course he has," said Maxwell. "There's no question of that. But this painting was of Earth. Or, at least, if that was the Artifact, and I think it was, then it was of Earth. But not this Earth, not the Earth we know. Perhaps the Jurassic Earth."
"And you don't think his other paintings were of Earth? They'd have to be of Earth. When Lambert lived, there was no other place to paint. There wasn't any space travel—not any real space travel, just out to the Moon and Mars."
"There was the space travel of imagination," Maxwell told her. "Space travel and time travel of the mind. No painter ever has been circumscribed by the here and now. And that's what everyone had thought, of course—that Lambert painted in the realm of imagination. But after tonight I wonder if he might not have been painting actual scenes and actual creatures—places where he'd been."
"You may be right," said Carol, "but how could he have gotten there? This business of the Artifact is exciting, of course, but—”
"It's something that Oop is always talking about," he explained. "He remembers the goblins and the trolls and all the rest of the Little Folk from Neanderthaler days. But there were others then, he said. Others that were worse. They were more malicious and mischievous and the Neanderthal people were scared to death of them."
"And you think some of these things in the painting may be the creatures Oop remembers."
"It was in my mind," he admitted. "I wonder if Nancy would mind if I brought Oop here tomorrow so he could see the painting."
"I don't imagine that she would," said Carol, "but, actually, it's not necessary. I took pictures of the painting."
"But you... "
"I know, of course," she said, "that it's not the proper thing to do. But I asked Nancy and she said she didn't mind. What else could she say? I didn't take the pictures to sell or anything like that. I just took them to have them for my own, for my personal enjoyment. A sort of pay, perhaps, for bringing Sylvester with me so people could have a look at him. Nancy knows what the score is and there wasn't anything that she could do about the picture taking. If you want Oop to have a look at them..."
"You mean you would?" he asked.
"Why, of course I would. And don't blame me, please, for taking the pictures. It's a way of getting even."
"Getting even? With Nancy?"
"Not with her, particularly, but with all these other people who invite me to their parties. With everyone who does. For they don't want me, really. It's Sylvester they invite. As if he were a trained bear or a clown of some sort. And, of course, to get him to their parties, they must invite me, too. But I know why they're inviting me and they know that I know and they keep on inviting me."
"I think I understand," he said.
"I think," she said, "it's very patronizing of them."
"So do I," he said.
"If we're going to show Oop the pictures," she said, "perhaps we'd best get going. This party is dying on its feet. You are positive you won't tell me what happened with the Wheeler."
"Later on," he said. "Not right now. Maybe later on." They left their place behind the potted plant and walked across the floor, heading for the door, threading their way through the thinning clusters of guests.
"We should hunt up Nancy," Carol suggested, "and say good-bye to her."
"Some other time," said Maxwell. "We can write her a note or phone her to say we couldn't find her and thank her for the evening, say how much we enjoyed it, how her parties are the ones we try to never miss, how much we liked the painting and how clever it was of her to get hold of it and—”
"Cut out the clowning," Carol said. "You are forcing it too much. You're not very good at it."
"I know it," Maxwell said, "but I always try."
They came to the door and started down the long flight of wide, curving stone stairs which led down to the roadway.
"Professor Maxwell!" cried a voice.
Maxwell turned. Coming down the stairs was Churchill.
"Just a moment, Maxwell, if you please," he said.
"Yes, what is it, Churchill?"
"A word. Alone, if the lady doesn't mind."
"I'll wait for you at the road," Carol said to Maxwell. "Don't bother," Maxwell said. "I'll settle him real fast."
"No," said Carol, "I'll wait. I don't want any trouble."
Maxwell waited while Churchill came swiftly down the stairs. The man was slightly out of breath and he reached out a hand to grab Maxwell by the arm.
"I've been trying to get to you all evening long," he said, "but you were always with a crowd."
"What is it that you want?" Maxwell asked him sharply.
"The Wheeler," Churchill said. "You must pay no attention to him. He doesn't know our ways. I didn't know what he intended to do. In fact, I told him not to—”
"You mean you knew the Wheeler might be laying for me?"
"I told him not to," Churchill protested. "I told him to leave you alone. I'm very sorry, Professor Maxwell. Believe me, I did my very best."
Maxwell's hand shot out and grabbed Churchill by the shirt front, twisting the fabric and pulling the man close to him.
"So you're the Wheeler's man!" he shouted. "You're fronting for him. It was you who made the offer for the Artifact and you made it for the Wheeler."
"What I did," declared Churchill angrily, "was my own business. I make my living representing people."
"The Wheeler isn't people," Maxwell said. "God knows what a Wheeler is. A hive full of insects, for one thing. What else we do not know."
"He has his rights," said Churchill. "He's entitled to do business."
"And you're entitled to help him," Maxwell said. "Entitled to take his wages. But be careful how you earn them. And don't get in my way."
He straightened his arm and flung Churchill from him. The man staggered, lost his balance, fell and rolled down several steps before he could catch himself. He lay there, sprawled, not trying to get up.
"By rights," said Maxwell, "I should have thrown you down the stairs and broken your filthy neck."
He glanced up toward the house and saw that a small crowd of people had collected at the door and were staring down at him. Staring and muttering among themselves.
He turned on his heel and went stalking down the stairs.
At the bottom Carol was clinging desperately to a frantic cat.
"I thought he was going to get away and go up there and tear that man to pieces," she gasped.
She looked at Maxwell with disgust written on her face.
"Can't you get along with anyone?" she asked.
16
Maxwell got off the roadway at the point where it crossed the mouth of Hound Dog Hollow and stood for a moment, staring at the rocky cliffs and bold headlands of the autumn bluffs. A short distance up the hollow, he caught a glimpse, through the red and yellow of the tinted leaves, of the bare rock face of Cat Den Point and up there, high against the sky, standing just back of the most prominent of the headlands, he knew he'd find the castle of the goblins, with one O'Toole in residence. And somewhere in that wilderness lay the mossy bridge that served as a den for trolls.
It was still early in the morning, since he had started out well before the dawn. A frosty dew lay upon the grass and twinkled on clumps of weeds the sun had not yet found. The air had a winy flavor to it and the sky was so faint and delicate a blue that it seemed to have no color and over all of it, over the entire landscape, hung a sense of strange expectancy.
Maxwell walked across the high-arched foot bridge that spanned the doub
le roadway and on the other side he found a path that led him up the hollow.
The trees closed in around him and he walked through a fairy land that held its breath. He found himself moving slowly and very carefully so that no quick movement or noise would break the forest hush. Leaves came planing down from the canopy above, fluttering wings of color falling gently to earth. Ahead of him a mouse ran, humping in its haste, moving through and over the fallen leaves, but making scarcely a rustle in its fleeing. Far up the hollow a bluejay screeched, but among the trees the screech was muted and robbed of its customary harshness.
The path forked, with the left-hand fork continuing up the hollow, while the right-hand fork angled up the bluff. Maxwell took the right-hand path. Ahead of him lay a long and wearying climb, but he would take it easy and stop to rest at frequent intervals. It would be a shame on a day like this, he told himself, not to stop to rest as often as he could, begrudging the time that eventually would take him out of this place of color and of silence.
The path was steep, with many turnings to dodge the massive boulders crouched upon the ground, anchored in the soil, gray-bearded with their crops of lichens. The tree trunks crowded close, the rough, dark bark of ancient oak, the satin whiteness of the birches, showing little tan blotches where the thin bark had peeled off but still clung, fluttering in the wind. In the cluttered trash of the surface rose the fat red pyramid of the jack-in-the-pulpit fruit, the shriveled hood drooping like a tittered purple robe.
Maxwell climbed slowly, saving his breath, stopping often to look around, to soak in the feel of autumn that lay all about. He reached, finally, the fairy green where Churchill's flier, with himself as passenger, had come crashing down under the spell of the trolls' enchantment. Just up the hill a ways lay the goblin castle.
He stood for a moment on the green, resting, then took up the climb again. Dobbin, or another horse very similar to him, was cropping at the scanty grass which grew in ragged bunches in a pole-fenced pasture. A few doves fluttered about the castle's turrets, but there were no other signs of life.
Sudden shouts shattered the morning's peace and out of the open castle gate came a gang of trolls, moving rapidly and in curious formation. They were in three lines and each line had a rope across its shoulders, exactly, Maxwell told himself, like the old painting he had seen of the Volga boatmen. They charged out onto the drawbridge and now Maxwell could see that the three ropes were attached to a block of hewn stone which bounced along behind them, raising a hollow, booming racket when it hit the drawbridge.
Old Dobbin was neighing wildly, kicking up his heels and galloping madly around the inside perimeter of the fence.
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 bouncing 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 war whoops and shrieks. In the forefront of the goblin band, Mr. O'Toole ran heavily, his face and neck violet with his anger, a 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 thrashing 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 whuffled 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 be 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 from 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 low-down 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 ha
s 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 smoldering 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."
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 he 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 low-down trick and one which clearly demonstrates they are bereft of all nobility of spirit."
He put the 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.