"I have the feeling," said Maxwell, "that it would be better not to ask, but where did you get that rack of ribs? I imagine all the butcher shops were closed."
"Well, they were," admitted Oop, "but there was this one and on the back door it had this itty bitty padlock..."
"Someday," said Ghost, "you'll get into trouble."
Oop shook his head. "I don't think so. Not this time. Primal necessity-no, I guess that's not the phrase. When a man is hungry he has a right to food anywhere he finds it. That was the law back in prehistoric days. I imagine you still might make a case of it in a court of law. Besides, tomorrow I'll go back and explain what happened. By the way," he said to Maxwell, "have you any money?"
"I'm loaded," Maxwell told him. "I carried expense money for the Coonskin trip and I never spent a cent of it."
"On this other planet you were a guest," said Carol.
"I suppose I was," said Maxwell. "I never did figure out our exact relationship."
"They were nice people?"
"Well, yes, nice-but people, I don't know."
He turned to Oop. "How much will you need?"
"I figure a hundred ought to settle it. There is the meat, and the busted door, not to mention the bruised feelings of our friend, the butcher."
Maxwell took his billfold from his pocket and, counting out some bills, handed them to Oop.
"Thanks," said Oop. "Someday I'll pay you back."
"No," said Maxwell. "The party is on me. I started out to take Carol to dinner and things got somewhat upset."
On the hearth, Sylvester stretched and yawned, then went back to sleep, lying on his back now, with his legs sticking in the air.
Ghost asked, "You're on a visit here, Miss Hampton?"
"No," said Carol, surprised. "I work here. What gave you that idea?"
"The tiger," said Ghost. "A bio-mech, you said. I thought, naturally, you were with Bio-mech."
"I see," said Carol. "Vienna or New York."
"There is a center also," said Ghost, "somewhere in Asia. Ulan Bator, if my memory is correct."
"You've been there?"
"No," said Ghost. "I only heard of it."
"But he could," said Oop. "He can go anywhere. In the blinking of an eyelash. That's why the folks at Supernatural continue to put up with him. They hope that someday they can come up with whatever he has got. But Old Ghost is cagey. He's not telling them."
"The real reason for his silence," said Maxwell, "is that he's on Transport's payroll. It's worth their while to keep him quiet. If he revealed his traveling techniques, Transport would go broke. No more need of them. People could just up and go anywhere they wished, on their own-a mile or a million light-years.
"And he's the soul of tact," said Oop. "What he was getting at back there was that unless you are in Bio-mech and can cook up something for yourself, it costs money to have something like that saber-toother."
"Oh, I see," said Carol. "I guess there's truth in that. They do cost a lot of money. But I haven't got that kind of money. My father, before he retired, was in Bio-mech. New York. Sylvester was a joint project of a seminar he headed. The students gave him to my dad."
"I still don't believe," said Oop, "that cat's a bio-mech. He's got that dirty glitter in his eyes when he looks at me."
"As a matter of fact," Carol told him, "there is a lot more bio than mech in all of them today. The name originated when what amounted to a highly sophisticated electronic brain and nervous system was housed in specific protoplasms. But today about the only mechanical things about them are those organs that are likely to wear out if they were made of tissue-the heart, the kidneys, the lungs, things like that. What is being done at Bio-mech today is the actual creations of specific life forms-but you all know that, of course."
"There are some strange stories," Maxwell said. "A group of supermen, kept under lock and key. You have heard of that?"
"Yes, heard of it," she said. "There are always rumors."
"The best one that I've heard in recent days," said Oop, "really is a lulu. Someone told me Supernatural has made contact with the Devil. How about that, Pete?"
"I wouldn't know," said Maxwell. "I suppose someone has tried. I'm almost sure someone must have tried. It's such an obvious thing for one to have a go at."
"You mean," asked Carol, "that there might really be a Devil?"
"Two centuries ago," said Maxwell, "people asked, in exactly the same tone of voice you are using now, if there actually were such things as trolls and goblins."
"And ghosts," said Ghost. "You're serious!" Carol cried.
"Not serious," said Maxwell. "Just not ready to fore-close even on the Devil."
"This is a marvelous age," declared Oop, "as I am sure you've heard me indicate before. You've done away with superstition and the old wives' tales. You search in them for truth. But my people knew there were trolls and goblins and all the rest of them. The stories of them, you understand, were always based on fact. Except that later on, when he outgrew his savage simplicity, if you can call it that, man denied the fact; could not allow himself to believe these things that he knew were true. So he varnished them over and hid them safe away in the legend and the myth and when the human population kept on increasing, these creatures went into deep hiding. As well they might have, for there was a time when they were not the engaging creatures you seem to think they are today."
Ghost asked: "And the Devil?"
"I'm not sure," said Oop. "Maybe. But I can't be sure. There were all these things you have lured out and rediscovered and sent to live on their reservations. But there were many more. Some of them fearful, all of them a nuisance."
"You don't seem to have liked them very well," Carol observed.
"Miss," said Oop, "I didn't."
"It would seem to me," said Ghost, "that this would be a fertile field for some Time investigation. Apparently there were many different kinds of these-would you call them primates?"
"I think you might," said Maxwell.
"Primates of a different stripe than the apes and man."
"Of a very different stripe," said Oop. "Vicious little stinkers."
"Someday, I'm sure," said Carol, "Time will get around to it. They know it, of course?"
"They should," said Oop. "I've told them often enough, with appropriate description."
"Time has too much to do," Maxwell reminded them. "Too many areas of interest. And the entire past to cover."
"And no money to do it with," said Carol.
"There," declared Maxwell, "speaks a loyal Time staff member."
"But it's true," she cried. "The other disciplines could learn so much by Time investigation. You can't rely on written history. It turns out, in many cases, to be different than it actually was. A matter of emphasis or bias or of just poor interpretation, embalmed forever in the written form. But do these other departments provide any funds for Time investigation? I'll answer that. They don't. A few of them, of course. The College of Law has cooperated splendidly, but not many of the others. They're afraid. They don't want their comfortable little worlds upset. Take this matter of Shakespeare, for example. You'd think English Lit would be grateful to find that Oxford wrote the plays. After all, it had been a question that had been talked about for many years-who really wrote the plays? But, after all of that, they resented it when Time found out who really wrote the plays."
"And now," said Maxwell, "Time is bringing Shakespeare forward to lecture about how he didn't write the plays. Don't you think that's rubbing it in just a bit too much?"
"That's not the point of it, 'at all," said Carol. "The point is that Time is forced to make a sideshow out of history to earn a little money. That's the way it is all the time. All sorts of schemes for raising money. Earning a lousy reputation as a bunch of clowns. You can't believe Dean Sharp enjoys-"