Clifford D. Simak

“That is good booze,” said Oop defensively. “Although,” he admitted, “it could do with just a touch more aging. Seems that it gets drunk up quicker than I can get it made.”

Maxwell lifted the jar and drank moodily. The hooch burned its way fiercely down his gullet and exploded in his stomach, but the explosion did no good. He still stayed moody and aware. There were times, he told himself, when there was no such thing as getting drunk. Pour it in two-fisted and you still stayed sober. And right now, he thought, he would dearly love to get sodden drunk and stay that way for a day or so. Maybe when he sobered up, life wouldn’t seem so bad.

“What I can’t understand,” said Oop, “is why Old Bill should take this business of his ghost so bad. He did, of course. He was scared pink with purple spots. But the thing that bothers me is that he wasn’t upset with Ghost. Oh, a little jittery at first, as one might expect of a sixteenth-century man. But once we had explained it to him, he seemed rather pleased with it. He accepted Ghost much more readily than would have been the case, say, with a twentieth-century man. In the sixteenth century they believed in ghosts and ghosts were something that could be accepted. He never got the wind up until he found that Ghost was his ghost and then…”

“He was quite intrigued,” said Carol, “by our relations with the Little Folk. He made us promise we’d take him down to the reservation so he could get acquainted with them. As was the case with ghosts, he believed in them implicitly.”

Maxwell took another hooker out of the jar and slid it across to Oop. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Being free and easy with a ghost, with just any ghost,” he said, “would come under a different heading than meeting up with one particular ghost that turned out to be your ghost. It is impossible for a man to accept, to actually accept and believe in, his own death. Even knowing what a ghost is…”

“Oh, don’t please start that up again,” said Carol.

Oop grinned. “He sure went out of there like a shot,” he said. “Like you’d tied a firecracker to his tail. He went through that door without even touching the latch. He just busted through it.”

“I didn’t see,” said Maxwell. “I had a bowl of gravy in my face.”

“There wasn’t anyone got anything out of the whole mess,” said Oop, “except that saber-toother over there. He got a haunch of beef. Rare, the way he likes it.”

“The cat’s an opportunist,” Carol observed. “He always comes out smelling pretty.”

Maxwell stared at her. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. How do you come to be mixed up with us? I thought you washed your hands of us last night after the affair with the Wheeler.”

Oop chuckled. “She was worried about you. Also, she is nosy.”

“There’s something else as well,” said Maxwell. “How come you are mixed up in it at all? Let’s take it from the first. You were the one who tipped us off about the Artifact-about it being sold.”

“I didn’t tip you off. I misspoke. It just-”

“You tipped us off,” Maxwell declared. “I think you meant to do it. What do you know about the Artifact? You must have known something to not have wanted it sold.”

“Yeah, that is right,” said Oop. “Sister, you better start telling us what it is all about.”

“A couple of bullies…”

“No,” said Maxwell, “let’s not turn it to a joke. This is something that’s important.”

“Well, I had heard about it being sold, as I told you. I wasn’t supposed to know. And I was worried about it and I didn’t like the sound of it. Not that there was anything really wrong with the sale of it, legally, I mean. I understood that Time had title to it and could sell it if it wished. But it didn’t seem to me that a thing like the Artifact should be sold, even for umpteen billion dollars. Because I did know something about it-something that no one else knew about it and I was afraid to try to tell anyone what I knew. And when I mentioned how important the Artifact was to other people, I could see that they couldn’t care less. Then, that night, when you two talked about it and were so interested-”

“You thought maybe we could help.”

“Well, I don’t know what I thought. But you were the first ones who had shown any interest in it. Although I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t come right out and tell you, because, you see, I wasn’t supposed to know it and there was a matter of being loyal to Time and I was all mixed up.”

“Were you working with the Artifact? Is that how…”

“Well, no,” she said, “not working with it. But one day when I stopped to look at it-like any tourist, you understand, just walking through the inner court of the museum and stopping to have a look at it, because it was an interesting object and a mysterious one as well-and I saw something, or thought I saw something. I don’t know now. I can’t be sure. Although at the time, I remembered I was sure, I was absolutely certain that I saw this thing about it no one had ever noticed, or if they had noticed…”