"Drink up," he urged. "Drink up, then I fill them yet again for a further wetting of the whistle."
"You go ahead," Maxwell told him. "It's a shame to drink ale the way you do. It should be tasted and appreciated."
Mr. O'Toole shrugged. "A pig I am, no doubt. But this be disenchanted ale and not one to linger over."
Nevertheless he got to his feet and shuffled over to the cask to refill his mug. Maxwell lifted his mug and took a drink. There was a mustiness, as Mr. O'Toole had said, in the flavor of the ale—a tang that tasted not unlike the way that leaf smoke smelled.
"Well?" the goblin asked.
"It has a strange taste to it, but it is palatable."
"Someday that troll bridge I will take down," said Mr. O'Toole, with a surge of sudden wrath. "Stone by stone, with the moss most carefully scraped off to rob the stones of magic, and with a hammer break them in many smallish bits, and transport the bits to some high cliff and there fling them far and wide so that in all eternity there can be no harvesting of them. Except," he said, letting his shoulders droop, "so much hard labor it would be. But one is tempted. This be the smoothest and sweetest ale that was ever brewed and now look at it—scarcely fit for hogs. But it be a terrible sin to waste even such foul-tasting slop if it should be ale."
He grabbed the mug and jerked it to his face. His Adam's apple bobbed and he did not take down the mug until all the ale was gone.
"And if I wreak too great a damage to that most foul bridge," he said, "and should those craven trolls go sniveling to authority, you humans will jerk me on the rug to explain my thinking and that is not the way it should be. There is no dignity in the living by the rule and no joy, either, and it was a rotten day when the human race arose."
"My friend," said Maxwell, shaken, "you have not said anything like this to me before."
"Nor to any other human," said the goblin, "and to all the humans in the world, only to you could I display my feeling. But I, perchance, have run off at the mouth exceedingly."
"You know well enough," said Maxwell, "that I'll not breathe a word of it."
"Of course not," said Mr. O'Toole. "That I did not worry on. You be almost one of us. You're the closest to a goblin that a human can approach."
"I am honored," Maxwell told him.
"We are ancient," said Mr. O'Toole, "more ancient, I must think, than the human mind can wonder. You're sure you don't want to polish off that most foul and terrible drink and start another one afresh?"
Maxwell shook his head. "You go ahead and fill your mug up again. I'll sit here and enjoy mine instead of gulping it."
Mr. O'Toole made another trip to the cask and came back with a brimming mug, slapped it on the table, and settled himself elaborately and comfortably.
"Long years gone," he said, shaking his head in sadness, "so awful long ago and then a filthy little primate comes along and spoils it all for us."
"Long ago," said Maxwell. "As long as the Jurassic?"
"You speak conundrums. I do not catch the term. But there were many of us and many different kinds and today there be few of us and not all the different kinds. We die out very slowly, but inexorably. A further day will dawn to find no one of us. Then you humans will have it to yourselves."
"You are overwrought," Maxwell cautioned him. "You know that's not what we want. We have gone to much effort..."
"Loving effort?" asked the goblin.
"Yes, I'd even say too much loving effort."
Weak tears ran down the goblin's cheeks and he lifted a hairy, calloused hand to wipe them away.
"You must pay me slight attention," he told Maxwell. "I deep am in the dumps. It's this business of the Banshee."
"The Banshee is your friend?" Maxwell asked in some surprise.
"No friend of mine," said Mr. O'Toole. "He stands on one side the pale and I upon the other. An ancient enemy, but still one of us. One of the really old ones. He hung on better than the others. He dies more stubbornly. The others all are dead. And in days like this, old differences go swiftly down the drain. We could not sit a wake with him, as conscience would decree, but in the absence of this we pay him the small honor of a wake for him. And then these low-crawling trolls without a flake of honor in them—”
"You mean no one, no one here on the reservation, could sit the deathwatch with the Banshee?"
Mr. O'Toole shook his head wearily. "No single one of us. It is to the law contrary, to the old custom in violation. I cannot make you understand—he is outside the pale."
"But he is all alone."
"In a thorn bush," said the goblin, "close beside the hut that was his domicile."
"A thorn bush?"
"In the thorns," the goblin said, "dwell magic, in the tree itself..."
He choked and grabbed hastily at the mug and raised it to his mouth. His Adam's apple bobbed.
Maxwell reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the photo of the lost Lambert that hung on Nancy Clayton's wall.
"Mr. O'Toole," he said, "there's something I must show you."
The goblin set down the mug.
"Let me see it, then," he said. "All this beating amongst the bushes, when there was something that you had."
He reached for the photo, bending his head to puzzle over it.
"The trolls," he said, "of course. But these others I do not recognize. As if I should, but fail. There be stories, old, old stories... "
"Oop saw the picture. You know of Oop, of course." "The great barbarian who claims to be your friend."
"He is my friend," said Maxwell. "And Oop recalls these things. They are old ones from the ancient days."
"But what magic is called upon to get a picture of them?"
"That I don't know. That's a picture of a painting, painted by a man many years ago."
"By what means...”
"I do not know," said Maxwell. "I think that he was there."
Mr. O'Toole picked up his mug and saw that it was empty. He tottered to the cask and filled it. He came back with his drink and picked up the photo, looking at it carefully, although somewhat blearily.
"I know not," he finally said. "There were others of us. Many different ones no longer present. We here are the tail end of a noble population."
He pushed the photo back across the table. "Mayhaps the Banshee," he suggested. "The Banshee's years are beyond all telling."
"But the Banshee's dying."
"That he is," said Mr. O'Toole, "and an evil day it is and a bitter day for him, with no one to keep the deathwatch."
He lifted his mug. "Drink up," he said. "Drink up. Can one drink enough, it may not be so bad."
17
Maxwell came around the corner of the tumble-down shack and saw the thorn tree standing to one side of it. There was something strange about the tree. It looked as if a cloud of darkness had settled along its vertical axis, making it appear to have a massive bole, out of which emerged short and slender, thorn-armed twigs. And if what O'Toole had said was true, Maxwell told himself, that dark cloud clustered in the tree must be the dying Banshee.
He walked slowly across the intervening space and stopped a few feet from the tree. The black cloud moved restlessly, like a cloud of slowly roiling smoke.
"You are the Banshee?" Maxwell asked the tree.
"You've come too late," the Banshee said, "if you wish to talk with me."
"I did not come to talk," said Maxwell. "I came to sit with you."
"Sit then," the Banshee said. "It will not be for long."
Maxwell sat down upon the ground and pulled his knees up close against his chest. He put his hands down beside him, palms flat against the mat of dry and browning grass. Below him the autumn valley stretched to the far horizon of the hills north of the river—unlike the hills of this southern shore, but gentle, rolling hills that went up toward the sky in slanted, staircase fashion.
A flurry of wings swept across the ridge behind him and a flock of blackbirds went careening through the blue haze
that hung against the steep ravine that went plunging downward from the ridge. But except for that single instant of wings beating in the air, there was a soft and gentle silence that held no violence and no threat, a dreaming silence in which the hills stood quiet.
"The others did not come," the Banshee said. "I thought, at first, they might. For a moment I thought they might forget and come. There need be no distinction among us now. We stand as one, all beaten to the selfsame level. But the old conventions are not broken yet. The old-time customs hold."
"I talked with the goblins," Maxwell told him. "They hold a wake for you. The O'Toole is grieving and drinking to blunt the edge of grief."
"You are not of my people," the Banshee said. "You intrude upon me. Yet you say you come to sit with me. How does it happen that you do this?"
Maxwell lied. He could do nothing else. He could not, he told himself, tell this dying thing he had come for information.
"I have worked with your people," he said, "and I've become much concerned with them."
"You are the Maxwell," said the Banshee. "I have heard of you."
"How do you feel?" asked Maxwell. "Is there anything I can do for you? Something that you need?"
"No," the Banshee said. "I am beyond all needing. I feel almost nothing. That is the trouble, that I feel nothing. My dying is different than your dying. It is scarcely physical. Energy drains out from me and there's finally nothing left. Like a flickering light that finally gutters out."
"I am sorry," Maxwell said. "If talking hastens—”
"Talking might hasten it a little, but I no longer mind. And I am not sorry. I have no regret. I am almost the last of us. There are three of us still left, if you count me, and I am not worth the counting. Out of the thousands of us, only two are left."
"But there are the goblins and the trolls and fairies..." "You do not understand," the Banshee said. "No one has ever told you. And you never thought to ask. Those you name are the later ones, the ones that came after us when the planet was no longer young. We were colonists, surely you know that."
"I had thought so," Maxwell said. "In just the last few hours."
"You should have known," the Banshee said. "You were on the elder planet."
Maxwell gasped. "How did you know that?"
"How do you breathe air?" the Banshee asked. "How do you see? With me, communicating with that ancient planet is as natural as is breath and sight with you. I am not told; I know."
So that was it, thought Maxwell. The Banshee had been the source of the Wheeler's knowledge and it must have been Churchill who had tipped the Wheeler to the fact that the Banshee had the information, who had guessed the Banshee might have knowledge no one else suspected.
"And the others—the trolls, the..."
"No," the Banshee said. "The Banshees were the only ones to whom the road was open. That was our job, that was our only purpose. We were the links with the elder planet. We were communicators. When the elder planet sent out colonies, it was necessary that some means of communicating should be established. We all were specialists, although the specialties have little meaning now and nearly all of the specialists are gone. The first ones were the specialists. The ones who came later simply were settlers meant to fill the land."
"You mean the trolls and goblins?"
"The trolls and goblins and the rest of them. With abilities, of course, but not specialized. We were the engineers, they the workers. There was a gulf between us. That is why they will not come to sit with me. The old gulf still exists."
"You tire yourself," said Maxwell. "You should conserve your strength."
"It does not matter. Energy drains out of me and when the energy is gone, life is gone as well. This dying I am doing has no concern with matter or with body, for I never really had a body. I was all energy. And it does not matter. For the elder planet dies as well; you have seen my planet and you know."
"Yes, I know," said Maxwell.
"It would have been so different if there had been no humans. When we first came here there were scarcely any mammals, let alone a primate. We could have prevented it—this rising of the primates. We could have pinched them in the bud. There was some discussion of it, for this planet had proved promising and we were reluctant at the thought that we must give it up. But there was the ancient rule. Intelligence is too seldom found for one to stand in the way of its development. It is a precious thing—even when we stepped aside for it most reluctantly, we still had to recognize that it was a precious thing."
"But you stayed on," said Maxwell. "You may have stepped aside, but you still stayed on."
"It was too late," the Banshee told him. "There was no place for us to go. The elder planet was dying even then. There was no point in going back. And this planet, strange as it may seem, had become home for us."
"You must hate us humans."
"At one time, we did. I suppose there still is hatred. But hate can burn out in time. Burn low, perhaps, but never entirely disappear. Although, perhaps, even in our hatred, we held some pride in you. Otherwise, why should the elder planet have offered you its knowledge?"
"But you offered it to the Wheeler, too."
"The Wheeler—oh, yes, I know who you mean. But we did not really offer it. The Wheeler had heard about the elder planet, apparently from some rumor heard far in space. And that the planet had something that it wished to sell. It came to me and asked one question only—what was the price of this commodity. I don't know if it knew what might be for sale. It only said commodity."
"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, sturd
y 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.
18
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."