The Goblin Reservation Page 7

  "A translator," said Oop.

  "I suppose that's what it was. A two-way translator."

  "We've tried to work one out," said Oop. "By we I mean the combined ingenuity not only of the Earth, but of what we laughingly call the known galaxy."

  "Yes, I know," said Maxwell.

  "And these folks had one. These ghosts of yours."

  "They have a whole lot more," said Maxwell. "I don't know what they have. I sampled some of what they had. At random. Just enough to convince myself they had what they said."

  "One thing still bugs me," said Oop. "You said a planet. What about the star."

  "The planet is roofed over. There was a star, I gather, but you couldn't see it, not from the surface. The point is, of course, that there needn't be a star. You are acquainted, I think, with the concept of the oscillating universe."

  "The yo-yo universe," said Oop. "The one that goes bang, and then bang, bang again."

  "That's right," said Maxwell. "And now we can quit wondering about it. It happens to be true. The crystal planet comes from the universe that existed before the present universe was formed. They had it figured out, you see. They knew the time would come when all the energy would be gone and all the dead matter would start moving slowly back to form another cosmic egg, so that the egg could explode again and give birth to yet another universe. They knew they were approaching the death of the universe and that unless something were done, it would be death for them as well. So they launched a project. A planetary project. They sucked in energy and stored it—don't ask me how they extracted it from wherever they extracted it or how they stored it. Stored somehow in the very material of the planet, so that when the rest of the universe went black and dead, they still had energy. They roofed the planet in, they made a house of it. They worked out propulsion mechanisms so they could move their planet, so that they would be an independent body moving independently through space. And before the inward drifting of the dead matter of the universe began, they left their star, a dead and blackened cinder by this time, and set out on their own. That's the way they have been since then, a holdover population riding on a planetary spaceship. They saw the old universe die, the one before this one. They were left alone in space, in space that had no hint of life, no glint of light, no quiver of energy. It may be—I don't know—that they saw the formation of the brand-new cosmic egg. They could have been very far from it and seen it. And if they saw it, they saw the explosion that marked the beginning of this universe we live in, the blinding flash, far off, that sent the energy streaking into space. They saw the first stars glow red, they saw the galaxies take shape. And when the galaxies had formed, they joined this new universe. They could go to any galaxy they chose, set up an orbit about any star they wished. They could move anytime they wanted to. They were universal gypsies. But the end is nearing now. The planet, I suppose, could keep on and on, for the energy machinery must still be operative. I imagine there might even be a limit to the planet, but they're not even close to that. But the race is dying out and they have stored in their records the knowledge of two universes."

  "Fifty billion years," said Oop. "Fifty billion years of learning."

  "At least that much," said Maxwell. "It could be a great deal more."

  They sat, silent, thinking of those fifty billion years. The fire mumbled in the chimney's throat. From far off came the chiming of the clock in Music Hall, counting off the time.

  9

  Maxwell awoke.

  Oop was shaking him. "Someone here to see you."

  Maxwell threw back the covers, hoisted his feet out on the floor, groped blindly for his trousers. Oop handed them to him. "Who is it?"

  "Said his name was Longfellow. Nasty, high-nosed gent. He's waiting outside for you. You could see he wouldn't risk contamination by stepping in the shack."

  "Then to hell with him," said Maxwell, starting to crawl back into bed.

  "No, no," protested Oop. "I don't mind at all. I'm above insult. There is nothing that can faze me."

  Maxwell struggled into his trousers, slid his feet into his shoes and kicked them on.

  "Any idea who this fellow is?"

  "None at all," said Oop.

  Maxwell stumbled across the room to the bench set against the wall, spilled water from the bucket standing there into a washbasin, bent and sloshed water on his face.

  "What time is it?" he asked.

  "A little after seven."

  "Mr. Longfellow must have been in a hurry to see me."

  "He's out there now, pacing up and down. Impatient."

  Longfellow was impatient.

  As Maxwell came out of the door, he hurried up to him and held out a hand.

  "Professor Maxwell," he said, "I'm so glad I found you. It was quite a job. Someone told me you might be here," he glanced at the shack and his long nose crinkled just a trifle, "so I took the chance."

  "Oop," said Maxwell, quietly, "is an old and valued friend."

  "Could we, perhaps, take a stroll," suggested Longfellow. "It is an unusually fine morning. Have you breakfasted yet? No, I don't suppose you have."

  "It might help," said Maxwell, "if you told me who you are."

  "I'm in Administration. Stephen Longfellow is the name. Appointments secretary to the president."

  "Then you're just the man I want to see," said Maxwell. "I need an appointment with the president as soon as possible."

  Longfellow shook his bead. "I would say offhand that is quite impossible."

  They fell into step and walked along the path that led down toward the roadway. Leaves of wondrous, shining yellow fell slowly through the air from a thick-branched walnut tree that stood beside the path. Down by the roadway a maple tree was a blaze of scarlet against the blueness of the morning sky. And far in that sky streamed a V-shaped flock of ducks heading southward.

  "Impossible," said Maxwell. "You make it sound final. As if you'd thought about it and come to your decision."

  "If you wish to communicate with Dr. Arnold," Longfellow told him coldly, "there are proper channels. You must understand the president is a busy man and—”

  "I understand all that," said Maxwell, "and I understand as well about the channels. Innumerable delays, a request passed on from hand to hand and the knowledge of one's communication spread among so many people—”

  "Professor Maxwell," Longfellow said, "there is no use, it seems, to beat about the bush. You're a persistent man and, I suspect, a rather stubborn one, and with a man of that bent it is often best to lay it on the line. The president won't see you. He can't afford to see you."

  "Because there seems to have been two of me? Because one of me is dead?"

  "The press will be full of it this morning. All the headlines shouting about a man come back from the dead. Have you heard the radio, perhaps, or watched television?"

  "No," Maxwell said, "I haven't."

  "Well, when you got around to it you'll find that you've been made a three-ring circus. I don't mind telling you that it is embarrassing."

  "You mean a scandal?"

  "I suppose you could call it that. And administration has trouble enough without identifying itself with a situation such as yours. There is this matter of Shakespeare, for example. We can't duck that one, but we can duck you."

  "But surely," said Maxwell, "administration can't be too concerned with Shakespeare and myself as compared to all the other problems that it faces. There is the uproar over the revival of dueling at Heidelberg and the dispute over the ethics of employing certain alien students on the football squads and—”

  "But can't you see," walled Longfellow, "that what happens on this particular campus are the things that matter."

  "Because administration was transferred here? When Oxford and California and Harvard and half a dozen others—”

  "If you ask me," Longfellow declared stiffly, "it was a piece of poor judgment on the part of the board of regents. It has made things very difficult for administration."

&nb
sp; "What would happen," asked Maxwell, "if I just walked up the hill and into administration and started pounding desks?"

  "You know well enough. You'd be thrown out."

  "But if I brought along a corps of the newspaper and television boys and they were outside watching?"

  "I suppose then you wouldn't be thrown out. You might even get to see the president. But I can assure you that under circumstances such as those you'd not get whatever it may be you want."

  "So," said Maxwell, "I'd lose, no matter how I went about it."

  "As a matter of fact," Longfellow told him, "I had come this morning on quite a different mission. I was bringing happy news."

  "I can imagine that you were," said Maxwell. "What kind of sop are you prepared to throw me to make me disappear?"

  "Not a sop," said Longfellow, much aggrieved. "I was told to offer you the post of dean at the experimental college the university is establishing out on Gothic IV."

  "You mean that planet with all the witches and the warlocks?"

  "It would be a splendid opportunity for a man in your field," Longfellow insisted. "A planet where wizardry developed without the intervention of other intelligences, as is the case on Earth."

  "A hundred and fifty light-years distant," said Maxwell. "Somewhat remote and I would think it might be dreary. But I suppose the salary would be good."

  "Very good indeed."

  "No, thanks," said Maxwell. "I'm satisfied with my job, right here."

  "Job?" asked Longfellow.

  "Why, yes. In case you have forgotten, I'm on the faculty."

  Longfellow shook his head. "Not any longer," he said. "Have you, by any chance, forgotten? You died, more than three weeks ago. We can't let vacancies go unfilled."

  "You mean I've been replaced?"

  "Why, most certainly," Longfellow told him nastily. "As it stands right now, you are unemployed."

  10

  The waiter brought the scrambled eggs and bacon, poured the coffee, then went away and left Maxwell at the table. Through the wide expanse of window, Lake Mendota stretched away, a sheet of glassy blue, with the faint suggestion of purple hills on the other shore. A squirrel ran down the bole of the gnarled oak tree that stood just outside the window and halted, head downward, to stare with beady eyes at the man sitting at the table. A brown and red oak leaf planed down deliberately, from branch to ground, wobbling in the tiny thermal currents of air. On the rocky shore a boy and girl walked slowly, hand in hand, through the lakeshore's morning hush.

  It would have been civilized and gracious, Maxwell told himself, to have accepted Longfellow's invitation to eat breakfast with him, but by that time he had had all that he could take of the appointments secretary and all that he wanted, at the moment, was to be alone, to gain a little time to sort out the situation and to do some thinking—although probably he could not afford the time for thinking.

  Oop had been right; it was apparent now that to see the university president would be no easy task, not only because of that official's busy schedule and his staff's obsession of doing things through channels, but because for some reason, not entirely understood, this matter of twin Peter Maxwells had assumed the proportions of a scandal from which Arnold had the fervent wish to be disassociated. Maxwell wondered, sitting there and gazing out the window at the popeyed, staring squirrel, whether this attitude of the administration might go back to the interview with Drayton. Had Security zeroed in on Arnold? It didn't seem too likely, but it was, Maxwell admitted, a possibility. But be that as it may, the depth of Arnold's jittery attitude was emphasized by the hurried offer of the post on Gothic IV. Not only did administration want nothing to do with this second Peter Maxwell, it wanted him off the Earth as well, buried on a planet where in the space of a little time he would be forgotten.

  It was understandable that his post at Supernatural had been filled after the death of the other Peter Maxwell. After all, classes must go on. Gaps could not be left in the faculty. But even so, there were other positions that could have been found for him. The fact that this had not been done, that the Gothic IV position had been so quickly offered, was evidence enough that he was not wanted on the Earth.

  Yet, it all was strange. Administration could not have known until sometime yesterday that two Peter Maxwells had existed. There could not have been a problem, there'd have been no basis for a problem, until that word had been received. Which meant, Maxwell told himself, that someone had gotten to administration fast—someone who wanted to get rid of him, someone who was afraid that he would interfere. But interfere in what? And the answer to that seemed so glib and easy that he felt, instinctively, that it must be wrong. But search as he might, there was one answer only—that someone else knew of the hoard of knowledge on the crystal planet and was working to get hold of it.

  There was one name to go on. Carol had said Churchill—that Churchill somehow was involved in the offer that had been made to Time for the Artifact. Was it possible that the Artifact was the price of the crystal planet's knowledge? One couldn't count on that, of course, although it might be so, for no one knew what the Artifact might be.

  That Churchill was working on the deal was no surprise at all. Not for himself, of course, but for someone else. For someone who could not afford to have his identity revealed. It was in deals such as this that Churchill might prove useful. The man was a professional fixer and knew his way around. He had contacts and through long years of operation undoubtedly had laid out various pipelines of information into many strange and powerful places.

  And if such were the case, Maxwell realized, his job became much harder. Not only must he guard against the rumormongering that was implicit in administration channels, he must now be doubly sure that none of his information fell into other hands where it might be used against him.

  The squirrel had gone on down the tree trunk and now was busily scrounging on the slope of lawn that ran down to the lake, rustling through the fallen leaves in search of an acorn he might somehow have missed before. The boy and girl had walked out of sight and now a hesitant breeze was softly rumpling the surface of the lake.

  There were only a few others at breakfast in the room; most of those who had been there when Maxwell entered had finished now and left. From the floor above came the distant murmuring of voices, the scuffling of feet as the daily flow of students began to fill the Union, the off-hours gathering place of undergraduates.

  It was one of the oldest structures on the campus and one of the finest, Maxwell told himself. For over five hundred years it had been the meeting place, the refuge, the study hall of many generations and in the course of all these generations it had settled easily and comfortably into the functional tradition that made it a second home for many thousand students. Here could be found a quietness for reflection or for study, here the cozy corners needed for good talk, here the game rooms for billiards or for chess, here the eating places, here the meeting halls, and tucked off in odd corners little reading rooms with their shelves of books.

  Maxwell pushed back his chair, but stayed sitting, finding himself somehow reluctant to get up and leave—for once he left this place, he knew, he'd plunge into the problems he must face. Outside the window lay a golden autumn day, warming as the sun rose in the sky—a day for showers of golden leaves, for blue haze on the distant hills, for the solemn glory of chrysanthemums bedded in the garden, for the quiet glow of goldenrod and aster in the fields and vacant lots.

  From behind him he heard the scurrying of many hard-shod feet and when he swung around in his chair, he saw the owner of the feet advancing rapidly across the squared red tiles toward him.

  It looked like an outsize, land-going shrimp, with its jointed legs, its strangely canted body with long, weird rods—apparently sensory organs—extending outward from its tiny head. Its color was an unhealthy white and its three globular black eyes bobbed on the ends of long antennae.

  It came to a halt beside the table and the three antennae swiveled to aim
the three eyes straight at Maxwell.

  It said in a high, piping voice, the skin of its throat fluttering rapidly beneath the seemingly inadequate head, "Informed I am that you be Professor Peter Maxwell."

  "The information happens to be right," said Maxwell. "I am Peter Maxwell."

  "I be a creature out of the world you would name Spearhead Twenty-seven. Name I have is of no interest to you. I appear before you in carrying out commission by my employer. Perhaps you know it by designation of Miss Nancy Clayton."

  "Indeed I do," said Maxwell, thinking that it was very much like Nancy Clayton to employ an outlandish creature such as this for an errand boy.

  "I work myself through education," explained the Shrimp, "doing anything I find."

  "That's commendable," said Maxwell.

  "I train in mathematics of time," declared the Shrimp. "I concentrate on world-line configurations. I am in tizzy over it."

  The Shrimp didn't look as if it were in any sort of tizzy.

  "Why all the interest?" Maxwell asked "Something in your background? Something in your cultural heritage?"

  "Oh, very much indeed. Is completely new idea. On my world, no thought of time, no appreciation such a thing as time. Am much shocked to learn of it. And excited, too. But I digress too greatly. I come here on an errand. Miss Clayton desires to know can you attend a party the evening of this day. Her place, eight by the clock."

  "I believe I can," said Maxwell. "Tell her I always make a point of being at her parties."

  "Overjoyed," said the Shrimp. "She so much wants you there. You are talked concerning."

  "I see," said Maxwell.

  "You hard to find. I run hard and fast. I ask in many places. Finally victorious."

  "I am sorry," Maxwell said, "I put you to such trouble."

  He reached into his pocket and took out a bill. The creature extended one of its forward legs and grasped the bill in a pair of pincers, folded it and refolded it and tucked it into a small pouch that extruded from its chest.