The Goblin Reservation
Clifford D. Simak
1
Inspector Drayton sat, solidly planted behind the desk, and waited. He was a rawboned man with a face that looked as if it might have been hacked, by a dull hatchet, out of a block of gnarled wood. His eyes were points of flint and at times they seemed to glitter, and he was angry and upset. But such a man, Peter Maxwell knew, would never give way to any kind of anger. There was, behind that anger, a bulldog quality that would go plodding on, undisturbed by anger.
And this was just the situation, Maxwell told himself, that he had hoped would not come about. Although, as now was evident, it had been too much to hope. He had known, of course, that his failure to arrive at his proper destination, some six weeks before, would have created some consternation back here on the Earth; the thought that he might be able to slip home unobserved had not been realistic. And now here he was, facing this man across the desk and he'd have to take it easy.
He said to the man behind the desk: "I don't believe I entirely understand why my return to Earth should be a matter for Security. My name is Peter Maxwell and I'm a member of the faculty of the College of Supernatural Phenomena on Wisconsin Campus. You have seen my papers...”
"I am quite satisfied," said Drayton, "as to who you are. Puzzled, perhaps, but entirely satisfied. It's something else that bothers me. Would you mind, Professor Maxwell, telling me exactly where you've been?"
"There's not very much that I can tell you," Peter Maxwell said. "I was on a planet, but I don't know its name or its coordinates. It may be closer than a light-year or out beyond the Rim?”
"In any event," said Drayton, "you did not arrive at the destination you indicated on your travel ticket."
"I did not," said Maxwell.
"Can you explain what happened?"
"I can only guess. I had thought that perhaps my wave pattern was diverted, perhaps intercepted and diverted. At first I thought there had been transmitter error, but that seems impossible. The transmitters have been in use for hundreds of years. All the bugs should have been ironed out of them by now."
"You mean that you were kidnaped?"
"If you want to put it that way."
"And still will tell me nothing?"
"I have explained there's not much to tell."
"Could this planet have anything to do with the Wheelers?"
Maxwell shook his head "I couldn't say for sure, but I don't believe it did. Certainly there were none of them around. There was no indication they had anything to do with it."
"Professor Maxwell, have you ever seen a Wheeler?"
"Once. Several years ago. One of them spent a month or two at Time. I caught sight of it one day."
"So you would know a Wheeler, if you saw one?"
"Yes, indeed," said Maxwell.
"I see you started out for one of the planets in the Coonskin system."
"There was the rumor of a dragon," Maxwell told him. "Not substantiated. In fact, the evidence was quite sketchy. But I decided it might be worth investigating..."
Drayton cocked an eyebrow. "A dragon?" he demanded.
"I suppose," said Maxwell, "that it may be hard for someone outside my field to grasp the importance of a dragon. But the fact of the matter is that there is no scrap of evidence to suggest such a creature at any time existed. This despite the fact that the dragon legend is solidly embedded in the folklore of the Earth and some of the other planets. Fairies, goblins, trolls, banshees—we have all of these, in the actual flesh, but no trace of a dragon. The funny thing about it is that the legend here on Earth is not basically a human legend. The Little Folk, as well, have the dragon legend. I sometimes think they may have been the ones who transmitted it to us. But the legend only. There is no evidence..."
He stopped, feeling a little silly. What could this stolid policeman who sat across the desk care about the dragon legend?
"I'm sorry, Inspector," he said. "I let my enthusiasm for a favorite subject run away with me."
"I have heard it said that the dragon legend might have risen from ancestral memories of the dinosaur."
"I have heard it, too," said Maxwell, "but it seems impossible. The dinosaurs were extinct long before mankind had evolved."
"Then the Little Folk..."
"Possibly," said Maxwell, "but it seems unlikely. I know the Little Folk and have talked with them about it. They are ancient, certainly much more ancient than we humans, but there is no indication they go back that far. Or if they do, they have no memory of it. And I would think that their legends and folk tales would easily carry over some millions of years. They are extremely long-lived, not quite immortal, but almost, and in a situation such as that, mouth-to-mouth tradition would be most persistent."
Drayton gestured, brushing away the dragons and the Little Folk. "You started for the Coonskin," he said, "and you didn't get there."
"That is right. There was this other planet. A roofed-in, crystal planet."
"Crystal?"
"Some sort of stone. Quartz, perhaps. Although I can't be sure. It could be metal. There was some metal there."
Drayton asked smoothly. "You wouldn't have known, when you started out, that you'd wind up on this planet?"
"If it's collusion you have in mind," said Maxwell, "you're very far afield. I was quite surprised. But it seems you aren't. You were waiting here for me."
"Not particularly surprised," said Drayton. "It has happened twice before."
"Then you probably know about the planet."
"Nothing about it," said Drayton. "Simply that there's a planet out there somewhere, operating an unregistered transmitter and receiver, and communicating by an unlisted signal. When the operator here at Wisconsin Station picked up their signal for transmittal, he signaled them to wait, that the receivers all were busy. Then got in touch with me."
"The other two?"
"Both of them right here. Both tabbed for Wisconsin Station."
"But if they got back..."
"That's the thing," said Drayton. "They didn't. Oh, I guess you could say they did, but we couldn't talk with them. The wave pattern turned out faulty. They were put back together wrong. They were all messed up. Both of them were aliens, but so tangled up we had a hard time learning who they might have been. We're still not positive."
"Dead?"
"Dead? Certainly. A rather frightful business. You're a lucky man."
Maxwell, with some difficulty, suppressed a shudder. "Yes, I suppose I am," he said.
"You'd think," said Drayton, "that anyone who messed around with matter transmission would make sure they knew how it was done. There's no telling how many they may have picked up who came out wrong in their receiving station."
"But you would know," Maxwell pointed out. "You'd know if there had been any losses. A station would report back immediately if a traveler failed to arrive on schedule."
"That's the funny thing about it," Drayton told him. "There have been no losses. We're pretty sure the two aliens who came back dead to us got where they were going, for there's no one missing."
"But I started out for Coonskin. Surely they reported..."
Then he stopped as the thought struck him straight between the eyes.
Drayton nodded slowly. "I thought you would catch on. Peter Maxwell got to the Coonskin system and came back to Earth almost a month ago."
"There must be some mistake," Maxwell protested weakly.
For it was unthinkable that there should be two of him, that another Peter Maxwell, identical in all details, existed on the Earth.
"No mistake," said Drayton. "Not the way we have it figured. This other planet doesn't divert the pattern. What it does is copy it."
"Then th
ere could be two of me! There could be..."
"Not any more," said Drayton. "You're the only one. About a week after he returned, there was an accident. Peter Maxwell's dead."
2
Around the corner from the tiny room where he'd met with Drayton, Maxwell found a vacant row of seats and sat down in one of them, rather carefully, placing his single piece of luggage on the floor beside him.
It was incredible, he told himself. Incredible that there should have been two Pete Maxwells and now one of those Maxwells dead. Incredible that the crystal planet could have had equipment that would reach out and copy a wave pattern traveling faster than the speed of light— much faster than the speed of light, for at no point in the galaxy so far linked by the matter transmitters was there any noticeable lag between the time of transmittal and arrival. Diversion—yes, perhaps there could be diversion, a reaching out and a snatching of the pattern, but the task of copying such a pattern would be something else entirely.
Two incredibles, he thought. Two things that should not have happened. Although if one of them had happened, the other surely followed. If the pattern had been copied, there would, quite necessarily, have been two of him, the one who went to the Coonskin system and the other who'd gone to the crystal planet. But if this other Peter Maxwell had really gone to Coonskin, he should still be there or only now returning. He had planned a six weeks' stay at least, longer if more time seemed necessary to run down the dragon business.
He found that his hands were shaking and, ashamed of this, he clasped them hard together and held them in his lap.
He couldn't go to pieces, he told himself. No matter what might be facing him, he had to see it through. And there was no evidence, no solid evidence. All that he had was what a member of Security had told him and he couldn't count on that. It could be no more than a clumsy piece of police trickery designed to shake him into talking. Although it could have happened. It just could have happened!
But even if it had happened, he still had to see it through. For he had a job to do and one he must not bungle.
Now the job might be made the harder by someone watching him, although he could not be sure there'd be someone watching. It might not, he told himself, make any difference. His hardest job, he realized, would be to get an appointment with Andrew Arnold. The president of a planetary university would not be an easy man to see. He would have more with which to concern himself than listening to what an associate professor had to say. Especially when that professor could not spell out in advance detail what he wished to talk about.
His hands had stopped the trembling, but he still kept them tightly clasped. In just a little while he'd get out of here and go down to the roadway, where he'd find himself a seat on one of the inner, faster belts. In an hour or so he'd be back on the old home campus and then he'd soon find out if what Drayton said was true. And he'd be back with friends again—with Alley Oop and Ghost, with Harlow Sharp and Allen Preston and all the rest of them. There'd be rowdy midnight drinking bouts at the Pig and Whistle and long, slow walks along the shaded malls and canoeing on the lake. There'd be discussion and argument and the telling of old tales, and the leisurely academic routine that gave one time to live.
He found himself looking forward to the trip, for the roadway ran along the hills of Goblin Reservation. Not that there were only goblins there; there were many other of the Little Folk and they all were friends of his—or at least most of them were friends. Trolls at times could be exasperating and it was rough to build up any real and lasting friendship with a creature like a banshee.
This time of year, he thought, the hills would be beautiful. It had been late summer when he'd left for the Coonskin system and the hills still had worn their mantle of dark green, but now, in the middle of October, they would have burst into the full color of their autumn dress. There'd be the winy red of oak and the brilliant red and yellow of the maples and here and there the flaming scarlet of creeping vines would run like a thread through all the other colors. And the air would smell like cider, that strange, intoxicating scent that came upon the woods only with the dying of the leaves.
He sat there, thinking of the time, just two summers past, when he and Mr. O'Toole had gone on a canoe trip up the river, into the northern wilderness, hoping that somewhere along the way they might make some sort of contact with the spirits recorded in the old Ojibway legends. They had floated on the glass-clear waters and built their fires at night on the edges of the dark pine forests; they had caught their fish for supper and hunted down the wild flowers hidden in the forest glades and spied on many animals and birds and had a good vacation. But they had seen no spirits, which was not surprising. Very few contacts had been made with the Little Folk of North America, for they were truly creatures of the wilds, unlike the semicivilized, human-accustomed sprites of Europe.
The chair in which he sat faced the west and through the towering walls of glass he could see across the river to the bluffs that rose along the border of the ancient state of Iowa—great, dark purple masses rimmed by a pale blue autumn sky. Atop one of the bluffs he could make out the lighter bulk of the College of Thaumaturgy, staffed in large part by the octopoid creatures from Centaurus. Looking at those faint outlines of the buildings, he recalled that he had often promised himself he'd attend one of their summer seminars, but had never got around to doing it.
He reached out and shifted his luggage, preparing to get up, but he stayed on sitting there. He still was a little short of breath and his legs seemed weak. What Drayton had told him, he realized, had hit him harder than he'd thought, and still was hitting him in a series of delayed reactions. He'd have to take it easy, he told himself. He couldn't get the wind up. It might not be true; it probably wasn't true. There was no sense in getting too concerned about it until he'd had the chance to find out for himself.
Slowly he got to his feet and reached down to pick up his luggage, but hesitated for a moment to plunge into the hurried confusion of the waiting room. People—alien and human—were hurrying purposefully or stood about in little knots and clusters. An old, white-bearded man, dressed in stately black—a professor by the looks of him, thought Maxwell—was surrounded by a group of students who had to come to see him off. A family of reptilians sprawled in a group of loungers set aside for people such as they, not equipped for sitting. The two adults lay quietly, facing one another and talking softly, with much of the hissing overtones that marked reptilian speech, while the youngsters crawled over and under the loungers and sprawled on the floor in play. In one corner of a tiny alcove a beer-barrel creature, lying on its side, rolled gently back and forth, from one wall to the other, rolling back and forth in the same spirit, and perhaps for the same purpose, a man would pace the floor. Two spidery creatures, their bodies more like grotesque matchstick creations than honest flesh and blood, squatted facing one another. They had marked off upon the floor, with a piece of chalk, some sort of crude gameboard and had placed about upon it a number of strangely shaped pieces, which they were moving rapidly about, squeaking in excitement as the game developed.
Wheelers? Drayton had asked. Was there any tie-up with the crystal planet and the Wheelers?
It always was the Wheelers, thought Maxwell. An obsession with the Wheelers. And perhaps with reason, although one could not be sure. For there was little known of them. They loomed darkly, far in space, another great cultural group pushing out across the galaxy, coming into ragged contact along a far-flung frontier line with the pushing human culture.
Standing there, he recalled that first and only time he had ever seen a Wheeler—a student who had come from the College of Comparative Anatomy in Rio de Janeiro for a two-week seminar at Time College. Wisconsin Campus, he remembered, had been quietly agog and there had been a lot of talk about it, but very little opportunity, apparently, to gain a glimpse of the fabled creature since it stayed closely within the seminar confines. He had met it, trundling along a corridor, when he'd gone across the mall to have lunch wit
h Harlow Sharp, and he recalled that he'd been shocked.
It had been the wheels, he told himself. No other creature in the known galaxy came equipped with wheels. It had been a pudgy creature, a roly-poly suspended between two wheels, the hubs of which projected from its body somewhere near its middle. The wheels were encased in fur and the rims of them, he saw, were horny calluses. The downward bulge of the roly-poly body sagged beneath the axle of the wheels like a bulging sack. But the worst of it, he saw when he came nearer, was that this sagging portion of the body was transparent and filled with a mass of writhing things which made one think of a pail of gaily colored worms.
And those writhing objects in that obscene and obese belly, Maxwell knew, were, if not worms, at least some kind of insect, or a form of life which could equate with that form of life on Earth which men knew as insects. For the Wheelers were a hive mechanism, a culture made up of many such hive mechanisms, a population of colonies of insects, or at least the equivalent of insects.
And with a population of that sort, the tales of terror which came from the far and rough frontier about the Wheelers were not hard to understand. And if these horror tales were true, then man here faced, for the first time since his drive out into space, that hypothetical enemy which it always had been presumed would be met somewhere in space.
Throughout the galaxy man had met many other strange and, at times, fearsome creatures, but none, thought Maxwell, could match fearsomeness with a creature that was a wheel-driven hive of insects. There was something about the whole idea that made one want to gag.
Today outlandish creatures flocked to the Earth in thousands, to attend the many colleges, to staff the faculties that made up that great galactic university which had taken over Earth. And in time, perhaps, thought Maxwell, the Wheelers might be added to this galactic population which swarmed the colleges of Earth—if only there could be some kind of understanding contact. But so far there hadn't been.
Why was it, Maxwell wondered, that the very idea of the Wheelers went against the grain, when man and all the other creatures in the galaxy contacted by the humans had learned to live with one another?