“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Marmaduke,” said Maxwell, speaking slowly, the only way he could, since his lips had become, like the rest of him, slightly stiff and frozen.
“And I you, Professor.”
“How did you know who I was?” asked Maxwell. “You seemed to have no doubt at all. You knew, of course, I’d be coming down the hall.”
“Of course,” the Wheeler said.
Now Maxwell could see the creature a bit more clearly, the bloated body supported on two wheels, the lower part of the body gleaming and twisting like a pail of worms.
“You are Nancy ’s guest?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “certainly I am. The guest of honor, I believe, at this gathering she has.”
“Then, perhaps, you should be out with the other guests.”
“I pleaded tiredness,” said Mr. Marmaduke. “A slight prevarication, I must admit, since I am never tired. So I went to rest a while-”
“And to wait for me?”
“Precisely,” said Mr. Marmaduke.
Nancy, Maxwell thought. No, Nancy, he was sure, wasn’t in on it. She had a frothy brain and all she cared about were her everlasting parties and she’d be incapable of any kind of intrigue.
“There is a subject we can talk about,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “with some profit, I presume, to the both of us. You are looking for a buyer, I believe, for a large commodity. I might have some passing interest in that commodity.”
Maxwell moved back a step and tried to find an answer. But there was no ready answer. Although he should have known, he told himself, or at least have suspected.
“You say nothing,” said Mr. Marmaduke. “I cannot be mistaken. You are, without fail, the agent for the sale?”
“Yes,” said Maxwell. “Yes, I am the agent.”
There was no use denying it, he knew. Somehow or other, this creature in the room knew about the other planet and the hoard of knowledge. And he might know the price as well. Could it have been the Wheeler, he wondered, who had made the offer for the Artifact?
“Well, then,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “let us proceed immediately to business and a discussion of the terms. Not forgetting, in the course of it, to mention the commission that will be coming to you.”
“I am afraid,” said Maxwell, “that is impossible at the moment. I do not know the terms. You see, I was first to find a potential buyer and then-”
“No trouble whatsoever,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “for I have the knowledge that you lack. I am acquainted with the terms.”
“And you will pay the price?”
“Oh, without any question,” said the Wheeler. “It will take just a little time. There are certain negotiations which must be terminated. Once those are done, you and I can complete all business and the matter will be done, without any fuss or trouble. The only thing, it would appear to me, is a determination of the commission which you will have earned so richly.”
“I would imagine,” said Maxwell bleakly, “that it might be a good commission.”
“We had in mind,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “of naming you-shall we say librarian?of the commodity we purchase. There will be much to do working out the various commodities and codifying them. For work of this sort we will need a creature such as you, and I imagine that you might find the work highly interesting. And the salary-Professor Maxwell, we pray you name the salary and the conditions of employment.”
“I would have to think about it.”
“By all means,” said Mr. Marmaduke. “In a procedure such as this, a little thought is good. You will find us most disposed to generosity.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Maxwell. “I’ll have to think about the deal. Whether I’d be willing to arrange a sale for you.”
“You doubt, perhaps, our worthiness to purchase the commodity?”
“That might be it,” said Maxwell.
“Professor Maxwell,” said the Wheeler, “it would be advisable for you to lay aside your doubts. It is for the best that you entertain no doubt of us at all. For we are most determined that we shall obtain what you have to offer. So, in the best of grace, you should deal with us.”
“Whether I want to or not?” asked Maxwell.
“I,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “would have not put it quite so bluntly. But you state it most correctly.”
“You are not in the best position,” Maxwell told him, “to speak in that tone of voice.”
“You are not aware of the position that we hold,” the Wheeler said. “Your knowledge goes out to only a certain point in space. You cannot know what lies beyond that point.”
There was something in the words, something in the way that they were said, that sent a chill through Maxwell, as if from some unknown quarter of the universe a sharp, frigid blast of wind had blown through the room.
Your knowledge goes only to a certain point in space, Mr. Marmaduke had said, and what lay beyond that point? No one could know, of course, except that in certain areas beyond the shadowy frontier of man’s probing it was known the Wheelers had staked out an empire. And seeping across that frontier came horror stories, such tales as any frontier might inspire, stemming from man’s wonder concerning that unknown which lay just a little way ahead.
There had been little contact with the Wheelers and there was almost nothing known of them-and that in itself was bad. There was no thrusting out of hands, no gestures of goodwill, either from the Wheelers or from the humans and their friends and allies. The frontier lay there, in that one great sector out in space, a silent, sullen line that neither side had crossed.
“I would be better able to come to some decision,” Maxwell said, “if my knowledge did extend, if we could know more about you.”
“You know that we are bugs,” said Mr. Marmaduke, and the words fairly dripped with scorn. “You are intolerant-”
“Not intolerant,” said Maxwell angrily, “and we do not think of you as bugs. We know you are what we would call hive mechanisms. We know each of you is a colony of creatures similar to the life forms that here on Earth we think of as insects, and that sets us apart from you, of course, but no more distant from us than many other creatures from many other stars. I do not like the word ’intolerant,’ Mr. Marmaduke, because it implies that there is ground for tolerance and there is no such thing-not for you, nor me, nor any other creature in the universe.”
He found that he was shaking with his anger and he wondered why he should suddenly become so angry at a single word. He could remain calm at the thought of the Wheeler buying the knowledge of the crystal planet, then flare with sudden anger at one specific word. Perhaps because, he told himself, with so many different races who must live together, both tolerance and intolerance had become dirty words.
“You argue well and amiably,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “and you may not be intolerant-”
“Even were there such a thing as intolerance,” said Maxwell, “I cannot understand why you’d resent it so. It would be a reflection upon the one who had exhibited it rather than upon the one toward whom it was directed. Not only a reflection upon good manners, but upon one’s basic knowledge. There can be nothing quite so stupid as intolerance.”
“Then if not intolerance,” asked the Wheeler, “what makes you hesitate?”
“I would have to know how you meant to use the commodity. I would want to know your purpose. I would need to know a great deal more about you.”
“So that you could judge?”
“I don’t know,” said Maxwell bitterly. “How can one judge a situation such as this?”
“We talk too much,” said Mr. Marmaduke. “And the talk is meaningless. I perceive you have no intention to make a deal with us.”
“At the moment,” Maxwell told him, “I would say that you were right.”
“Then,” said Mr. Marmaduke, “we must find another way. You will cause us, by your refusal, a great deal of time and trouble and we’ll be most ungrateful to you.”