The Werewolf Principle

Black towers spun in the darkness all about him — black spi

He stood in the chapel and the place was dim with the feeble light of the candelabra and from outside he could hear the moaning of the pines.

There was someone shouting and he saw a soldier ru

'Captain! Captain! bawled the ru

The other soldier took a short step forward.

'Take it easy, son, said Blake. 'I'm not going anywhere.

There was something tangled about his ankles and he saw it was his robe. He kicked it free and reached down to lift it and hang it on his shoulders.

A man with bars upon his shoulders came striding down the aisle. He stopped in front of Blake.

'I am Captain Saunders, sir, he said. 'Space Administration. We have been guarding you.

'Guarding me? asked Blake. 'Or watching me?

The captain gri

Blake pulled the robe more tightly about his shoulders. 'You are wrong, he said. 'You must know by now you're wrong. You know I am not human — not entirely human.

Perhaps, he thought, only human in the shape he now possessed, Although there must be more to it than that, for he'd been designed as human, had been engineered as human. There had been change, of course, but not so much change that he was un-human. Just un-human enough, he thought, to be unacceptable. Just un-human enough to be viewed as a monster by humanity.

'We've been. waiting, said the captain. 'We've been hoping…

'How long? asked Blake. 'How long has it been?

'Almost a year, the captain said.

A year! thought Blake. It had not seemed that long. It had seemed no more than hours. How long, he wondered, had he been held, unknowing, in the healing depths of the communal mind before he had come to know that he must break free? Or had he known from the first and struggled from the moment that Thinker had superseded him? It was hard to know, he realized. Time, inside the disassociated mind, might be robbed entirely of its meaning, might become useless as a yardstick for duration.

But long enough, at least, to effect some healing, for now the terror and the sharp-edged agony was gone, now he could stand and face the prospect that he was not human in sufficient measure to claim a place upon the Earth.

'And now? he asked.

'My orders, the captain said, 'are to take you to Washington, to Space Administration, as soon as it is safe to do so.

'It is safe right now, Blake told him. 'I will cause no trouble.

'It's not you I mean, the captain said. 'It's the crowd outside.

'What do you mean the crowd?

'This time a crowd of worshippers. There are cults, it seems, which think you are a messiah sent to deliver man from all the evil in him. And at other times there are other groups that denounce you as a monster — You'll pardon me, please, sir. I forgot myself.

'These groups, said Blake, 'the both of them, have given you some trouble?

'At times, the captain said. 'At times a great deal of it. That is why we must sneak out of here.

'But wouldn't it be better to just walk out? Put an end to it?

'Unfortunately, said the captain, 'it's not a situation that can be handled quite so easily. I may as well be frank with you. No one except a few of us will know that you are gone. The guard will still be kept and…

'You'll go on letting the people think that I'm still here?

'Yes. It will be simpler that way'

'But some day…

The captain shook his head. 'No. Not for a long, long time. You will not be seen. We have a ship waiting for you. So that you can leave — if you want to go, of course.

'To get rid of me?

'Perhaps, the captain said. 'But it also will enable you to get rid of us.

33

Earth wanted to get rid of him, perhaps afraid of him, perhaps merely disgusted by him, a loathsome product of its own ambitions and imagination that must be quickly swept underneath the rug. For there was no place for him on the Earth or in humanity, and yet he was a human product and had been made possible by the nimble brains and the weasel understanding of Earth's scientists.

He had wondered at this and thought of it when he first had gone into the chapel and now, standing at the window of his room, and looking out at the streets of Washington, he knew he had been right, that he had judged accurately the reaction of humanity.

Although how much of this attitude was the actual attitude of the people of the world, how much the official attitude of Space Administration, there was no way of knowing. To Space he was an old mistake, a pla

There had been, he remembered, a crowd on the hillside outside the cemetery — a crowd that had gathered there to pay homage to what they thought he stood for. Crackpots, certainly, cultists, more than like — the kind of people who leaped at any new sensation to fill their empty lives, but still people, still human beings, still humanity.

He stood and stared out at the sun-drenched streets of Washington, with the few cars moving up and down the avenue, and the lazy strollers who sauntered on the pavements underneath the trees. The Earth, he thought, the Earth and the people living on it — people who had their jobs and a family to go home to, who had chores and hobbies, their worries and their little triumphs, and their friends. But people who belonged. Even if he could belong, he wondered, if by some circumstance beyond imagining, he should be made acceptable to humanity, could he consider it? For he was not himself alone. He could not consider himself alone, for there were the other two and they held with him, in joint right, this mass of matter which made up his body.

That he was caught up in an emotional trap was no concern of theirs, although back there in the chapel they had made it concern of theirs. That they, themselves, were incapable of such emotion was beside the point — although, thinking of it, he wondered if Quester might not hold as great an emotional capacity as he.

But to become an outcast, to be ejected out of Earth, to roam the universe a pariah out of Earth, seemed more than he could face.

The ship was waiting for him, almost ready now, and it was up to him — he could go or stay. Although Space had made it quite apparent it was preferred that he should go.

And there was, actually, nothing to be gained by staying, only the faint hope that some day he might become a human once again.

And if he could — if he only could — would he want it?

His brain hummed with the absence of an answer and he stood, looking dully out the window, only half seeing what lay out on the street.

A knock on the door brought him around.

The door came open and through it he saw the guard, standing in the hallway.

Then a man was coming in and for a moment, half blinded from looking out the window at the bright glare of the street, Blake did not recognize him. Then he saw who it was.

'Senator, he said, moving towards the man, 'it was kind of you to come. I hadn't thought you would.

'Why shouldn't I have come? asked Horton. 'Your message said you'd like to talk with me.

'I didn't know if you would want to see me, Blake told him. 'After all, I probably contributed to the outcome of the referendum.

'Perhaps, Horton agreed. 'Yes, perhaps you did. Stone was most unethical in his use of you as a horrible example. Although I must give the man his due — he used it most effectively.

'I'm sorry, said Blake. 'That's what I want to tell you. I would have come to see you, but it seems that, for the moment, I am under a mild sort of detention.