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, sturdy 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.
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.”