Clifford D. Simak

“Well, good for you,” said Maxwell. “You’re one up on me. I was not invited.”

“But you got here just the same.”

“But don’t ask me how. I would be somewhat pressed for an explanation.”

“Sylvester has always been a decent cat,” she said accusingly. “Perhaps a little greedy sometimes, but a gentleman.”

“Oh, I know,” said Maxwell. “I’m a bad influence on almost everyone.”

She came all the way around the plant and sat down in the other chair. “Are you going to tell me what I asked?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can. It was somewhat confusing.”

“I don’t know,” she said, “that I’ve met a more exasperating man. I don’t think you’re being fair.”

“By the way,” he said, “you saw the painting, didn’t you?”

“Why, of course I did. That was what the party was all about. The painting and that funny Wheeler.”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Unusual?”

“Yes, about the painting.”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Up on the hill there was a tiny cube. Black, sitting on the hill. It looked like the Artifact.”

“I missed it. I didn’t look that closely at it.”

“You saw the gnomes, I presume.”

“Yes, I noticed them. Or, at least, they looked like gnomes.”

“And those other creatures,” Maxwell said. “They looked different, somehow.”

“Different from what?”

“Different from the other creatures Lambert usually painted.”

“I didn’t know,” she said, “you were a Lambert expert.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I went to the library this morning, after I learned about this party and the painting Nancy had and hunted up a book that had plates of his paintings.”

“But what if they were different?” Carol asked. “A painter surely has a right to paint anything he wants to.”

“Of course he has,” said Maxwell. “There’s no question of that. But this painting was of Earth. Or, at least, if that was the Artifact, and I think it was, then it was of Earth. But not this Earth, not the Earth we know. Perhaps the Jurassic Earth.”

“And you don’t think his other paintings were of Earth? They’d have to be of Earth. When Lambert lived, there was no other place to paint. There wasn’t any space travel-not any real space travel, just out to the Moon and Mars.”

“There was the space travel of imagination,” Maxwell told her. “Space travel and time travel of the mind. No painter ever has been circumscribed by the here and now. And that’s what everyone had thought, of course-that Lambert painted in the realm of imagination. But after tonight I wonder if he might not have been painting actual scenes and actual creatures-places where he’d been.”

“You may be right,” said Carol, “but how could he have gotten there? This business of the Artifact is exciting, of course, but-”

“It’s something that Oop is always talking about,” he explained. “He remembers the goblins and the trolls and all the rest of the Little Folk from Neanderthaler days. But there were others then, he said. Others that were worse. They were more malicious and mischievous and the Neanderthal people were scared to death of them.”

“And you think some of these things in the painting may be the creatures Oop remembers.”

“It was in my mind,” he admitted. “I wonder if Nancy would mind if I brought Oop here tomorrow so he could see the painting.”

“I don’t imagine that she would,” said Carol, “but, actually, it’s not necessary. I took pictures of the painting.”

“But you…”

“I know, of course,” she said, “that it’s not the proper thing to do. But I asked Nancy and she said she didn’t mind. What else could she say? I didn’t take the pictures to sell or anything like that. I just took them to have them for my own, for my personal enjoyment. A sort of pay, perhaps, for bringing Sylvester with me so people could have a look at him. Nancy knows what the score is and there wasn’t anything that she could do about the picturetaking. If you want Oop to have a look at them…”

“You mean you would?” he asked.

“Why, of course I would. And don’t blame me, please, for taking the pictures. It’s a way of getting even.”

“Getting even? With Nancy?”

“Not with her, particularly, but with all these other people who invite me to their parties. With everyone who does. For they don’t want me, really. It’s Sylvester they invite. As if he were a trained bear or a clown of some sort. And, of course, to get him to their parties, they must invite me, too. But I know why they’re inviting me and they know that I know and they keep on inviting me.”

“I think I understand,” he said.

“I think,” she said, “it’s very patronizing of them.”

“So do I,” he said.

“If we’re going to show Oop the pictures,” she said, “perhaps we’d best get going. This party is dying on its feet. You are positive you won’t tell me what happened with the Wheeler.”

“Later on,” he said. “Not right now. Maybe later on.” They left their place behind the potted plant and walked across the floor, heading for the door, threading their way through the thinning clusters of guests.

“We should hunt up Nancy,” Carol suggested, “and say good-bye to her.”