The Werewolf Principle

'Yes, I knew about that, said Blake. 'I've often wondered…

— What do you know of him?

'He came back, said the mind of Theodore Roberts, 'Brought back. Much the same as you…

'You mean suspended animation?

'Yes. But this time the ship came home. A few years after it went out. The crew was frightened by what had happened and…

'So I was no great surprise?

'Yes, I am inclined to think you were. No one tied you up with what had happened so long ago. Not too many people in Space knew about it. It wasn't until shortly before you escaped from the hospital, after the bioengineering hearing, that anyone began to wonder if you might not be the other one. But before anything could be done about it, you had disappeared.

'This other one? He is still on Earth? Space had him?

'I don't think so, said the mind of Theodore Roberts. 'I don't really know. He disappeared. I know that much…

'He disappeared! You mean they destroyed him!

'I don't know.

'Damn it, you must know, screamed Blake. 'Tell me! I'll go out there and tear the place apart. I'll find him…

'It's no use, said Theodore Roberts. 'He isn't there. Not any more.

'But when? How long ago?

'Several years ago. Well before you were brought back from space.

'Look — how do you know? Who told you…

'There are thousands of us here, said Theodore Roberts. 'What one knows is available to all. There's little that one misses.

Blake felt the freezing breath of futility closing in upon him. The other man had disappeared, Theodore Roberts said, and undoubtedly he should know. But where? Dead? Hidden away somewhere? Sent out into space again?

The one man, the only other being in the universe to which he could have felt close kinship — and now that man was gone.

'You're sure?

'I'm sure, said Theodore Roberts.

After a silence, Roberts asked, 'You're going back to space? You have decided to?

'Yes, said Blake. 'Yes, I think I have. There's nothing here on Earth.

And. there was, he knew, nothing here on Earth. If the other man was gone, there was nothing left on Earth. Elaine Horton had refused to talk with him and her father, once so friendly, had been cold and formal when he had said goodbye, and Theodore Roberts was a frosty voice speaking from the emptiness of one dimension.

'When you come back, said Theodore Roberts, 'I'll still be here. You will phone me, please. You will get in touch?

If I come back, thought Blake, if you still are here. If there is anybody here. If Earth is worth the coming back to.

'Yes, he said. 'Yes, of course, I'll phone you.

He reached out and flipped the toggle to break communication.

And sat, unstirring, in the dark and silence, feeling the Earth drawing back and away from him, flowing outwards in an expanding circle that left him all alone.

35

Earth lay behind. The Sun had shrunk, but was still the Sun and not another star. The ship was falling down the long tu

Blake sat in the pilot's chair, gazing through the curved transparency that opened out on space. It was so quiet here, he thought, so quiet and peaceful — the uneventfulness of the emptiness that lay between the stars. In a little while he'd have to get up and take a turn about the ship to satisfy himself that all was right and well, although he knew it would be. With a ship such as this nothing could go wrong.

— Going home, said Quester, speaking quietly in Blake's mind. Going home again.

— But not for long, Blake told him. Only long enough to pick up the data that we missed before — that you didn't have the time to get. Then moving on, to where you can reach out to other stars.

And going on and on, he thought, always moving on to harvest other stars, ru

— Quester's wrong, said Thinker. We have no home. We ca

— The ship will be our home, said Blake.

— Not the ship, said Thinker. If you insist on a home, then the universe. All space is home to us. The entire universe.

And that, thought Blake, might have been in substance what the mind of Theodore Roberts had tried to say to him. Earth is no more than a point in space, he'd said. And so, of course, were all the other planets, all the other stars — only points of matter and of energy, concentrated in remote localities, with emptiness between. Intelligence, Roberts had said, is all there is; it's the one significance. Not life alone, not matter, not energy, but intelligence. Without intelligence, all this scattered matter, all the flaming energy, all the emptiness, was of no consequence because it did not have a meaning. It was only intelligence that could take the matter and the energy and make it meaningful.

Although, thought Blake, it would be good to have an anchor somewhere in all this emptiness, to be able to point, if only in one's mind, to a particular glob of energy, and say that is my home — to have a place to tie to, to possess some frame of reference.

He sat in his chair, staring out at space, remembering once again that moment in the chapel when he had sensed for the first time his basic homelessness — that he never could belong, not on Earth, not anywhere, that while of Earth he never could be of Earth, that while human in his form he never could be human. But that moment, he realized now, also had shown him that no matter how homeless he might be, he was not alone and could never be alone. He had the other two, and he had more than that. He had the universe and all the ideas, all the fantasies, all the seething intellectual ferment that had ever risen in it.

Earth could have been a home, he thought; he had a right to expect it could be home. A point in space, he thought. And that was right — Earth was a tiny point in space. But no matter how tiny it might be, man needed such a point as a homing signal, as a beacon. The universe was not enough because it was too much. As a man from Earth, one stood for something, possessed identity; but the man of the universe was lost among the stars.

He heard the soft fall of the footstep and sprang up and swung around.

Elaine Horton stood just inside the door.

He took a quick step forward, then halted, frozen in his tracks.

'No! he shouted. 'No! You don't know what you're doing. A stowaway, he thought — a mortal on an immortal ship. And she had refused to talk with him, she'd…

'But I do, she said. 'I do know what I'm doing. I'm where I belong.

'An android, he said in bitterness. 'A simulated human. Sent to make me happy. While the real Elaine…

'Andrew, she said, 'I am the real Elaine.

He half lifted his arms, a gesture, and she suddenly was in them and he held her close, his body aching in happiness at her being there, at having someone human, at the closeness of a very special human.

'But, you can't! he cried. 'You can't. You don't realize what's going on. I'm not human. I'm not always this way. I turn into other things.

She lifted her head and looked at him. 'But I know, she said. 'You don't understand. I'm the other one — the other one of us.

'There was another man, he said, somewhat stupidly. 'There was…