The Goblin Reservation

“I’m sorry,” Carol said, “but, then, I’m also glad. How fortunate it was that there were two of you.”

“If Transport could work it out,” said Maxwell, “they might have something they could sell. All of us could keep a second one of us stashed away somewhere against emergency.”

“But it wouldn’t work,” Carol pointed out. “Not personally. This other Peter Maxwell was a second person and-oh, I don’t know what I mean. It’s too late at night to get it figured out, but I’m sure it wouldn’t work.”

“No,” said Maxwell. “No, I guess it wouldn’t. It was a bad idea.”

“It was a nice evening,” said Carol. “I thank you so much for it. I had a lot of fun.”

“And Sylvester had a lot of steak.”

“Yes, he did. He’ll not forget you. He loves folks who give him steak. He’s nothing but a glutton.”

“There is just one thing,” said Maxwell. “One thing you didn’t tell us. Who was it that made the offer for the Artifact?”

“I don’t know. Just that there was an offer. Good enough, I gather, for Time to consider it. I simply overheard a snatch of conversation I was not supposed to hear. Does it make a difference?”

“It could,” said Maxwell.

“I remember now,” she said. “There was another name. Not the one who meant to buy it, or I don’t think it was. Just someone who was involved. It had slipped my mind till now. Someone by the name of Churchill. Does that mean anything to you?”

Oop was sitting in front of the fireplace, paring his toenails with a large jackknife, when Maxwell returned, carrying his bag.

Oop gestured with his knife toward the bed. “Sling it over there and then come and sit down with me. I’ve just put a couple of new logs on the fire and I have a jug half finished and a couple more hid out.”

“Where’s Ghost?” asked Maxwell.

“Oh, he disappeared. I don’t know where he went; he never tells me. But he’ll be back again. He never is gone long.”

Maxwell put the bag on the bed, went over to the fireplace and sat down, leaning against its rough stone face.

“You played the clown tonight,” he said, “somewhat better than you usually manage. What was the big idea?”

“Those big eyes of hers,” said Oop, gri

“All that talk about ca

“Well,” said Oop, “I guess I just got carried away. That’s the way folks expect a crummy Neanderthal to act.”

“The girl’s no fool,” said Maxwell. “She planted that story about the Artifact as neatly as I have ever seen it done.”

“Planted it?”

“Sure, planted it. You don’t think it just slipped out, do you, the way she pretended that it did?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Oop. “Maybe she did. But if she did, why do you think she did it?”

“I would guess she doesn’t want it sold. Figured that if she told it to a blabbermouth like you it would be all over the campus before noon tomorrow. A lot of talk about it, she might figure, would help to kill the deal.”

“But you know, Pete, that I’m no blabbermouth.”

“I know it. But you acted like one tonight.”

Oop closed the jackknife and slid it in his pocket, picked up the half-empty fruit jar and handed it to Maxwell. Maxwell put it to his mouth and drank. The fiery liquid slashed like a knife along his throat and he choked. He wished, he thought, that for once he could drink the stuff without choking on it. He took it down and sat there, gasping for breath, shivering just a little.

“Potent stuff,” said Oop. “Best batch I’ve run off for quite a while. Did you see the bead on it?”

Maxwell, unable to speak, nodded.

Oop reached out and took the jar, tilted it up, lowered its level by an inch or more. He took it down and held it lovingly against his hairy chest. He let out his breath in a whoosh that made the flames in the fireplace dance. He patted the bottle with his free hand.

“First-rate stuff,” he said.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat, staring at the fire.

“She couldn’t, certainly, have taken you for a blabber-mouth,” he finally said. “I notice that you did some fancy skating of your own tonight. All around the truth.”

“Maybe because I don’t entirely know the truth myself,” said Maxwell. “Or what to do about it. You set to do some listening?”

“Any time,” said Oop. “If that is what you want. Although you don’t need to tell me. Not out of friendship. You know we’ll still be friends if you tell me nothing. We don’t even need to talk about it. There are a lot of other things we could talk about.”

Maxwell shook his head. “I have to tell you, Oop. I have to tell someone and you’re the only one I would dare to tell. There’s too much of it for me to go on carrying it alone.”

Oop handed him the fruit jar. “Take another slug of that, then start any time you want. What I can’t figure out is the goof by Transport. I don’t believe it happened. I would make a guess that it was something else.”

“And you’d be right,” said Maxwell. “There’s a planet out there somewhere. Fairly close, I’d guess. A freewheeling planet, not tied to any sun, although I gather that it could insert itself into a solar system any time it wishes.”

“That would take some doing. It would mess up the orbits of all the other planets.”

“Not necessarily,” said Maxwell. “It wouldn’t have to take an orbit in the same plane as the other planets. That would hold down the effect of its being there.”

He lifted the fruit jar, shut his eyes, and took a healthy gulp. The top of his head came off and his stomach bounced. He lowered the jar and leaned back against the roughness of the masonry. A wind was mewing in the chimney-a lonely sound, but a sound shut outside by the rough board walls. A log fell in the fireplace and sent up a shower of sparks. The flames danced high and ifickering shadows chased one another all about the room.

Oop reached out and took the jar out of Maxwell’s hands, but did not drink immediately. He held it, cuddled, in his lap.

“So this other planet reached out and copied your wave pattern,” he said, “and there were two of you.”

“How did you know that?”

“Deduction. It was the most logical way for it to happen. I know there were two of you. There was this other one who came back before you did. I talked with him and he was you-he was as much Pete Maxwell as you are, sitting there. He said there was no dragon, that the Coonskin business had been a wild-goose chase, and so he came home ahead of his schedule.”

“So that was it,” said Maxwell. “I had wondered why he came back early.”

“I’m hard put to it,” said Oop, “to decide if I should rejoice or mourn. Perhaps a bit of both, leaving some room for wonderment at the strange workings of human destiny. This other man was you and now he’s dead and I have lost a friend-for he was a human being and a personality and that humanity and personality came to an end with death. But now there’s you and if, before, I’d lost a friend, now I have regained that lost friend, for you are as truly Peter Maxwell as that other one.”

“I was told an accident.”

“I’m not sure,” said Oop. “I’ve been doing some thinking about it. Since you came back, I’m not so sure at all. He was getting off a roadway and he tripped and fell, hit his head…”

“You don’t trip when you’re getting off a roadway. Unless you’re drunk or crippled up or awkward. That outside belt is barely crawling.”

“I know,” said Oop. “That’s what the police thought, too. But there was no other explanation and the police, as you well know, require some sort of explanation, so they can close the file. It was in a lonely place. About halfway between here and Goblin Reservation. No one saw it. Must have happened when there was almost no one traveling. Maybe at night. He was found about ten o’clock in the morning. There would have been people traveling from six o’clock on, but probably they’d have been on the i