Clifford D. Simak

It was somehow different than the color plates he had seen in the library that morning. This was because, he told himself, of the larger size of the painting, the brilliance and the clarity of color, some of which had been lost in the color plates. But this, he realized, was not all of it. The landscape was different and the creatures in it. A more Earth-like landscape-the sweet of gray hills and the brown of the shrubby vegetation that lay upon the land, the squatty fernlike trees. A troop of creatures that could be gnomes wended their way across a distant hill; a goblinlike creature sitting at the base of a tree leaned back against the bole, apparently asleep, with some sort of hat pulled down across his eyes. And others-fearsome, leering creatures, with obscene bodies and faces that made the blood run cold.

On the crest of a distant, flat-topped hill, about the base of which clustered a large crowd of many kinds of creatures, a small black blob stood outlined against the grayness of the sky.

Maxwell drew in his breath in a startled gasp, took a quick step closer, then halted and stood stiff and straight, afraid to give himself away.

It seemed impossible that no one else could have noticed it, he told himself. Although, perhaps, someone had and had not thought it worth the mention, or had been unsure and thus reluctant to say anything about it.

But for Maxwell there could be no doubt. He was sure of what he saw. That small black blob on the distant hilltop was the Artifact!

Maxwell found a secluded corner, a couple of chairs screened by a huge flowering plant of some sort, planted in a marble tub of generous proportions. There was no one there and he sat down.

Out beyond the corner where he sat, the party was drawing to its close, beginning to dwindle down. Some people had left and those who still were there seemed to be less noisy. And if one more person asked him what had happened to him, Maxwell told himself, he’d belt them in the jaw.

I’ll explain, he had told Carol when she had asked the night before-I’ll explain over and over again. And that was what he’d done, not entirely truthfully, and no one had believed him. They’d looked at him with glassy eyes and they had figured that either he was drunk or was making fools of them.

And he, he realized, had really been the one who had been made a fool. He had been invited to the party, but not by Nancy Clayton. Nancy had not sent him clothes to wear and had not sent the car that had let him out at the back door to walk down the hall, past the door where the Wheeler waited. And ten to one, the dogs had not been Nancy ’s either, although he had not thought to ask her.

Someone, he realized, had gone to a lot of trouble in a very awkward and involved manner to make sure the Wheeler had a chance to talk with him. It was all so melodramatic, stinking so of cloak and dagger, that it was ridiculous. Except that, somehow, he couldn’t quite bring himself to think of it as ridiculous.

He coddled his drink with both his hands and listened to the clatter of the dying party.

He peered out around the greenery of the plant roosting in the tub and he could not see the Wheeler, although the Wheeler had been around for a good part of the evening.

He passed the drink, absentmindedly, from one hand to the other, and he knew he didn’t want it, that he’d had a touch too much to drink-not so much, perhaps, too much to drink, as the wrong place to be drinking it, not with a warm, tight group of friends in a friendly room, but with too many people who were either strangers or only slightly known, and in a room that was too large and too impersonal. He was tired, more weary than he’d known. In just a little while, he’d get up on his feet and say good night to Nancy, if she were around, and stumble back to Oop’s shack, the best way that he could.

And tomorrow? he asked himself. Tomorrow there were things that he should do. But he’d not think of them tonight; he’d wait until tomorrow.

He lifted the drink over the rim of the marble tub and poured it on the soil.

“Cheers,” he told the plant.

Carefully, bending slowly so as not to loose his balance, he set the glass upon the floor.

“Sylvester,” asked a voice, “do you see what we have here?”

He twisted around and there, on the reverse side of the plant, stood Carol, Sylvester close beside her.

“Come on in,” he invited them. “It’s a hideaway I found. If the two of you stay very quiet…”

“I’ve been trying to get you by yourself all evening,” Carol told him, “but there never was a chance. I want to know what was this routine of you and Sylvester hunting down the Wheeler?”

She came farther back into the corner and stood waiting for his answer.

“You were no more surprised than I was,” he said. “Sylvester’s showing up fairly left me gasping. I had no idea-”

“I get invited around a lot,” said Carol coldly. “Not for myself, of course, since I suppose you’re wondering, but because of Sylvester. He makes a good conversation piece.”