The Werewolf Principle (14 page)

“Then you refuse to let such an announcement be made?”

“So far as the hospital is concerned, I can't. If Space would give clearance to it, then I would agree. But I can't, not on my own. Even if I were right, Space would be down on me like a ton of bricks. They'd raise holy hell …”

“Even after two hundred years?”

“Even after that long a time. Can't you see that if Blake is what we think he is, he belongs to Space? It's up to them. He is their baby, not mine. He is something that they started and …”

Stone's chuckle rumbled through the room.

“Don't pay any attention to him, Chandler. Go ahead and tell the newspaper boys yourself. Go on and break the story. Show us you have some guts. Follow your convictions. I just hope you do.”

“I just bet you do,” said Horton.

“If you do,” said Stone, “I warn you, friend. One public word from you and I'll blow you so far out of the water it'll take you two weeks to come down.”

20

The steady beeping of the phone finally beat its way into the illusion-world bounded by dimensino. Elaine Horton roused herself, came out of the booth in which she had been sitting with the shadow-world of ancient days going on about her.

The phone kept up its beeping, the vision panel flashing in impatient pulses.

She made her way to it and switched it to receive. A face looked out at her, faintly lighted by a defective light bulb in the ceiling of a public phone booth.

“Andrew Blake?” she cried, surprised.

“Yes, it's me. You see …”

“Is there something wrong? The senator was called down to the …”

“I seem to be in a bit of trouble,” Blake told her. “You probably heard what happened.”

“At the hospital, you mean. I watched it for a while, but there wasn't much to see. Something about a wolf and they said one of the patients seems to have disappeared …”

She drew her breath in sharply. “One of the patients disappeared! Did they mean you, Andrew?”

“I'm afraid they did. And I need some help. And you're the only one I know, the only one that I could ask.…”

“What kind of help?” she asked.

“I need some clothes,” he told her.

“You mean you left the hospital without any clothes? And it's cold out there.…”

“It's a long story,” he said. “If you don't want to help me, go ahead and say so. I will understand. I don't want you to get involved, but I am slowly freezing and I am on the lam …”

“You mean you're running away from the hospital?”

“You could call it that.”

“What kind of clothes?”

“Any kind at all. I haven't got a stitch.”

She hesitated for a moment. Maybe she should ask the senator. But the senator wasn't home. He hadn't returned from the hospital and there was no telling when he would.

When she spoke again, she made her voice calm and hard. “Let me get this straight. You were the one who disappeared from the hospital, and without your clothes. And you say you aren't going back. You're on the lam, you say. You mean someone's hunting you?”

“For a while,” he said, “the police were after me.”

“But they aren't now?”

“No. Not for the moment. We gave them the slip.”

“We?”

“I misspoke. I mean I got away from them.”

She took a deep breath, committing herself. “Where are you?”

“I'm not absolutely sure. The city's changed since I knew it. I figure I'm out at the south end of the old Taft bridge.”

“Stay there,” she said. “Watch for my car. I'll slow down and be looking for you.”

“Thanks …”

“Just a moment. Something occurred to me. You're calling from a public booth?”

“That's right.”

“You need a coin to operate that kind of phone. Without any clothes, where did you get that coin?”

A sour grin split his face. “The coins drop into little boxes. I'm afraid I used a stone.”

“You broke open the box to get a coin to use the phone?”

“Just a natural criminal,” he said.

“I see. You'd better give me the number of the phone and stick close to it so I can tell you if I can't find you—if you aren't where you think you are.”

“Just a moment.” He looked at the plate above the phone and read off the number. She found a pencil and copied the number on a newspaper margin.

“You realize,” she said, “you're taking a chance on me. I've got you nailed to that phone and the number can be traced.”

He made a wry face. “I realize that. But I've got to take the chance. You're the only one I have.”

21

—This woman? Quester asked. She's a female, is she not?

—Yes, said Changer. Very much a female. Beautiful, I'd say.

—I grasp faintly at the connotation, Thinker said. The concept's new to me. A female is a being to whom one can demonstrate affection? The attraction, I take it, must be a mutual one. A female you can trust?

—Sometimes, said Changer. It depends on many things.

—I do not understand your attitude toward females, Quester grumbled. They are no more than continuators of the race. In the proper time and season …

—Your system, Thinker said, is inefficient and disgusting. If the need arises, I am my own continuator. The present question seems to be not the social or biological importance of this female, but is she someone we can trust?

—I don't know, said Changer. I think so. I've made a bet we can.

He crouched behind a clump of bushes, shivering. His teeth had a tendency to chatter. The wind, blowing from the north, had a touch of frost in it. He shifted his feet under him cautiously, trying to ease their soreness. He had stubbed his toes running in the dark and he'd stepped on something sharp and now his feet complained.

Out in the front of him stood the phone booth, the sign above it glowing dimly. Beyond the booth ran the street, practically deserted. Once in a while a ground car went thrumming along it, but always traveling fast. The bridge boomed hollowly as the cars passed over it.

Blake hunkered closer behind the bushes. Christ, he thought, what a situation! Squatting out here, naked and half frozen, waiting for a girl he'd seen only twice to bring him clothes and not entirely sure she would.

He grimaced, remembering the phone call. He had been compelled to crank up his courage to make it and he would not have blamed her if she'd not listened to him. But she had listened. Frightened, naturally, and perhaps somewhat suspicious, but who wouldn't be? A total stranger calling with a silly, if not embarrassing plea for help.

He had no claim on her. He knew that. And to make it even more ridiculous, this was the second time he'd been forced to call upon the senator's household for clothing to get him home. Although this time, he'd not be going home. The police would be watching and they'd nail him before he could get close.

He shivered and wrapped his arms about himself, in a futile attempt to conserve his body heat. From above him came a purring noise and he glanced quickly up. A house came slanting across the trees, losing altitude, perhaps heading for one of the downtown parking lots. Light shone from its windows and the sound of laughter and of music came to him. There were care-free, happy people up there while he crouched, shivering in the cold.

He watched the house until it disappeared, dropping east and lower.

And what did he do now? What did the three of them do now? Once he got the clothes, what would be his next move?

From what Elaine had said, he apparently was not as yet publicly identified as the man who had fled the hospital. But within hours the story would be out. Then his face would be staring from every printed page and would be on dimensino. In such a case he could not hope to escape being recognized. Either Thinker or Quester could take over the body, of course, and then there'd be no face to recognize, but either one of them would have to stay even more strictly out of sight than he. The climate was against them—too cold for Thinker and too hot for Quester, and there was the further complication that it was up to him to absorb and store up the energy that maintained and powered the body. There might be food that Quester could handle, but to determine it, research and testing would be needed. There were places, close to power sources, where Thinker could suck in energy, but they'd be hard to find and still stay undetected.

Would it be safe, he wondered, to try to contact Daniels? Thinking about it, he decided that it would be most unsafe. He knew the answer he would get—return to the hospital. And the hospital was a trap. There he would be subjected to endless interviews and further medical probing and, perhaps, a psychiatric treatment. He would not be in charge of himself. He would be politely guarded. He'd be a prisoner. And while man might have fabricated him, he fiercely told himself, he was not owned by man. He must remain himself.

And what about that self? Not man alone, of course, but man and two other creatures. Even if he wished, he never could escape those other minds that, with him, held joint ownership to this mass of matter which did service as their bodies. Now that he thought about it, he knew he did not wish to escape those minds. They were close to him, closer than anything else had ever been or could be. They were friends—well, perhaps not exactly friends, but collaborators existing in the common bonds of a single flesh. And even if they had not been friends and collaborators, there was yet another consideration he could not ignore. It had been through his agency that they were in this mess and, in light of that, he had no course but to stick with them to the end.

Would she come, he wondered, or would she turn her information over to the police or hospital? He could not bring himself to blame her, he told himself, if she did turn him in. How could she know that he was not mildly mad, or perhaps more mad than mildly? She might very well believe that she would be acting in his interest if she informed upon him.

Any moment now a police cruiser might come shrieking up and disgorge a freight of cops.

—Quester, Changer said, we may be in trouble. It's taking her too long.

—There are other ways, said Quester. If she fails us, we will find other ways.

—If the police show up, said Changer, we'll have to shift to you. I'd never be able to outrun them. I can't see too well in the dark and my feet are sore and …

—Any time you say, said Quester. I'll be ready. Just give me the word.

Down in the wooded valley a raccoon whickered. Blake shivered. Ten more minutes, he thought. I'll give her ten more minutes. If she doesn't show by that time, we'll get out of here. And he wondered how he was to know, without a watch, when ten minutes had gone past.

He crouched, miserable and shaken, lonely. An alien thing, he thought. Alien in a world of creatures of which he bore the shape. Was there any place, he asked himself, not only on this planet, but in the universe, for him? I'm human, he'd told Thinker; I insist on being human. But by what right did he insist?

—Steady, boy, said Quester. Steady. Steady. Steady.

Time wore on. The raccoon was silent. A bird twittered somewhere in the woods, wakened and disturbed by what prowling danger or what imagined threat?

A car came cruising slowly up the strip of paving. It pulled up to the curb opposite the phone booth. The horn bleated softly.

Blake rose from behind his bush and waved his arms.

“Over here,” he yelled.

The door of the car came open and Elaine stepped out. In the faint light of the weak bulb of the booth, he recognized her—the small oval of her face, the dark beauty of her hair. She carried a bundle in her hand.

She walked past the phone booth and moved toward the bush. Ten feet away she stopped.

“Here, catch,” she said, and tossed the bundle.

Fingers stiff with cold, Blake unwrapped the bundle and got into the clothes. The sandals were stout, the robe of black wool and with a cowl attached.

Dressed, he stepped out and walked forward to join Elaine.

“Thanks,” he said. “I was nearly frozen.”

“I'm sorry that it took so long,” she said, “I kept thinking of you hiding out here. But I had to get the stuff together.”

“Stuff?”

“Things that you will need.”

“I don't understand,” he said.

“You said that you were on the run. You'll need more than clothes. Come on and get inside the car. I have the heater on. It is warm in there.”

Blake drew back. “No,” he told her. “Don't you understand? I can't let you involve yourself any further than you have. Not that I'm not grateful …”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You're my good deed for the day.”

He pulled the robe closer about himself.

“Look,” she said, “you're cold. Get into the car.”

He hesitated. He was cold and the car was warm.

“Come on,” she said.

He went with her to the car, waited while she got in and slid behind the wheel, then got in and closed the door. A hot blast struck his ankles.

She shifted a gear lever and the car moved forward.

“I can't stay parked,” she said. “Someone would report me or investigate. So long as I keep moving, I am legal. Is there any place you would like to go?”

He shook his head. He hadn't even given thought to where he meant to go.

“Out of Washington, perhaps?”

“That is right,” he said. Out of Washington was at least a start.

“Can you tell me about it, Andrew?”

“Not much,” he said. “If I told you'd probably stop the car and throw me out.”

She laughed. “Don't try to dramatize it, whatever it may be. I'm going to swing around and head west. Is that O.K. with you?”

“It's O.K.,” he said. “There'll be places I can hide.”

“How long—I mean how long do you think you'll have to stay in hiding?”