The Werewolf Principle (18 page)

Or had that process of blunting already taken place? Had he placed himself in a position (or been placed in a position) where he would find himself with a greater scope than ever to seek out new wonders and fresh mysteries, but with the wonder and the beauty watered down by the knowledge that he was providing material for Thinker to work out the logic?

He tried to test the thought, but as yet the mysticism and the wonder still were his. Here, on this windswept ridge, with the stars shining in the sky above, with the wind blowing through the woods below him, and the woods talking to the dark, with the strange, alien smells and the other-worldly vibrations that shivered in the air, there still was room for wonder that ran like a chill along his nerves.

The space between him and the next hilltop seemed clear of any threat. Far off to the left ribbons of moving lights marked the passing of the cars along the road that cut across the hills. In the valley were habitations, betrayed by beams of light and by the vibrations that came streaming out from them—vibrations, radiations (whatever one might call them) of human life itself and of that strange force the humans called electricity.

There were birds roosting in the trees and some sort of larger animal (although smaller than himself) sneaked through the underbrush to the right of him, mice huddled in their nests, a woodchuck in his den—and uncounted hordes of little burrowers and tiny scavengers moving in the soil and its mulch of rotting leaves. But these he screened out of his consciousness, for at the moment they were no concern of his.

He went quietly down the hill, through the woods, marking every tree and bush along his path, cataloguing and evaluating all the larger creatures, alert for any danger, fearing only that he might meet a danger he would not recognize.

The trees came to an end and the fields were ahead of him—the fields and roads and houses—and here again he hesitated to search out the land ahead.

A human was walking down by the creek with his dog and a car was moving slowly up a private road that ran to a house across the creek, a herd of cows were sleeping in a field, but except for these, the valley seemed clear except for mice and gophers and other smaller residents.

He started across the valley at a trot, then broke into an easy, rocking lope that ate up the ground. He reached the slope of the next high hill and went swarming over it and down the other side.

He hugged the knapsack underneath his left arm and the sack was bulky because it held Changer's clothes as well as all the other items. It was a bother, for it lent him a lop-sided balance for which he must compensate and he must forever be on guard against its being snagged by a bush or branch.

He halted for a moment, dropped the knapsack to the ground and retracted his left arm. Relieved of its burden, the arm snuggled wearily into the pocket in his shoulder. He extruded his right arm and picked up the sack, tucked it underneath the arm and resumed his traveling. Perhaps, he told himself, he should shift the burden oftener, from one arm to the other. It might be easier if he did.

He crossed the valley, went up the next long hill, stopped at its crest to rest a moment before going on.

Willow Grove, Changer had said. A hundred miles. He could be there by dawn if he kept on as he had been going. And what might await the three of them when they reached Willow Grove? Willow was a tree and grove was a group of trees, and it was strange how humans named certain geographic points. There was little logic to it, for a willow grove could die and disappear and then the placename would have no significance.

Impermanent, he thought. But then the humans, themselves, as a race, were impermanent. Their continual changing of their lives, this thing that they called progress, made for impermanence. There was something to be said, he thought, for forging the sort of life a race might wish to live, to set up some basic values, and then be satisfied.

He took a step down the hill, then stopped, tensed and listening.

The sound came again—a faint, far bugling.

A dog, he told himself. A dog that had struck a trail.

He went swiftly, but cautiously, down the hill, sensing ahead and on either side. At the edge of the wood, he stopped to survey the stretch of level valley that lay ahead of him. There was nothing there that was a matter of concern, and he trotted out into the valley, came to a fence and leaped it and then went on.

For the first time, he felt a twinge of fatigue. Despite the relative coolness of the night, he was unused to the heat of Earth. He had been pushing hard, trying to cover as much ground as possible, to reach Willow Grove by morning. He'd have to take it easier for a while, hope to get his second wind. He must pace himself.

He crossed the valley at a trot, not breaking into a lope, reached the opposite slope and climbed it slowly. On the crest, he told himself, he would sit down and rest a while and by the time he started out again, he probably could resume his former pace.

Halfway up the slope he heard the baying once again and it seemed closer now and louder. It was whipped by the wind, however, and he could not be sure exactly how far away it was, or in what direction.

On the crest he halted and sat down. The moon was rising and the trees in which he sat threw long shadows out across a tiny meadow that lay on the steep hillside.

The baying definitely was closer now and there were more dogs than one. He tried to count them. There were four at least, perhaps five or six.

Coon-hunting, perhaps. The Brownie had said something about certain humans using dogs to chase raccoons, calling it a sport. But there was, of course, no sport in it. To think of anything like that as a sport called for a peculiar perversion—although, come to think of it, the humans seemed perverted in more ways than one. Honest war was something else, of course, but this was neither war nor honest.

The baying was coming up the slope behind him and coming fast. There was now a frantic, slobbering sound in the yelping of the dogs. They were hot upon the trail and coming fast.

Hot upon the trail!

Quester leaped to his feet and swung about, thrusting the sensor cone down the slope behind him. And there they were—driving up the hill, noses no longer to the ground, but lifted high to catch the scent that they had followed.

The realization struck him now—the thing he should have guessed, even back on the other hill when he first had heard the baying. The dogs were following no coon. They had struck on bigger game.

A thrill of horror shot through him and he spun about, to go plunging down the hill. Behind him, as the dog pack topped the hill, the wild song of the chase, no longer baffled by the rising slope of ground, rang out bugle-clear.

Quester flattened low against the ground, his legs a blur of speed, his tail floating out behind him. He reached the valley and crossed it and charged up the slope of the farther hill. He had gained distance on the dogs, but once again he felt the tiredness draining the strength out of his body and he knew the final outcome—he could outrun his pursuers in frantic bursts of speed, but in the end he'd lose, be overhauled when fatigue built up and slowed him down. Perhaps, he thought, the wiser thing would be to choose his ground and turn to wait for them. But there were too many of them. Two or three—he was sure he could handle two or three. But there were more than three. He could throw away the knapsack and, relieved of its weight and the unbalancing effect of it, he could run the faster. But the advantage would be slight and he had promised Changer he'd hang onto it. Changer would be annoyed if he abandoned it. Changer already was annoyed with him for occasionally forgetting that he had arms and hands.

It was strange, he thought, that the dogs should trail him. As an alien to this planet, he must be different than anything the dogs had ever known, must leave a different kind of trail, must have a different scent. But the difference (if there were a difference) seemed to instill no fear in them, had seemed to do no more than rouse them to a higher hunting frenzy. Perhaps, he told himself, he was not so much unlike the creatures of this planet as he would have thought.

He went on, but at a slower pace, settling into a determined lope and seeming to hold his own, but he was tiring much too fast. Before too long he'd be forced to exert himself to keep ahead and when that happened, he knew the end would be in sight.

He could, of course, call on Changer to take over. Perhaps the dogs would break off their trailing if the trail turned into a human trail, or even if they did continue to follow it, would not attack a man. But he shrank from doing this. He should, he told himself, hold up his end. He found in himself a stubborn pride that would not let him call on Changer.

He topped the rise and below him lay the valley and in the valley a house with one lighted window shining. And in his mind a plan began to form.

Not Changer, but Thinker. That might turn the trick.

—Thinker, you can extract energy from a house?

—Yes, of course. I did it once before.

—From outside the house?

—If I am close enough.

—All right, then. When I get …

—Carry on, said Thinker. I know what's in your mind.

Quester trotted down the hill, let the dogs close in, increased his speed when he struck the valley, heading for the house. The baying tapered off as the dogs, with the quarry now in sight, used every ounce of strength, every gasp of breath, to finally close upon it.

Quester glanced around and saw them, bunched together—terrible, striving shadows in the moonlight and across the space between them came an anxious whimpering, the excited sobbing of animals that closed in for the kill.

And then, suddenly, the baying burst out again, the cry of blood that rang across the sky and bounced against the hills.

The house now was only a little distance off and suddenly, as the baying bellowed in the night, more lights came on and from a pole outside the house a floodlight burst into blinding brilliance. Someone inside, apparently, had been aroused by the bloodthirsty clamor of the hounds.

A low picket fence separated the house from the field and Quester cleared the fence, landing in the full glare of the floodlight. With a sudden dash, he reached the house and huddled close against it.

—Now, he yelled to Thinker. Now!

26

It was cold, a biting, deadening cold, like a physical blow that staggered the body and the mind.

The satellite of the planet hung above a ragged line of uplifted vegetation and the land was sterile and dry, while across the construction the humans called a fence leaped the raging creatures that were designated dogs.

But somewhere close was a bank of energy and Thinker grabbed at it—in need, in desperation, almost in a panic. Grabbed at it and took it, more than he had need of, far more than he had need of. The house went dark and on the pole the floodlight flickered and went out.

The cold was gone and his body fell into the pyramidal form and it glowed. The data was there once again, as it had been before, sharper, more concise than it had ever been before, ranged in ranks and files, waiting to be used. Inside his mind the logic process was clean and bright and sharp and it had been far too long since he had made use of it.

—Thinker, Quester yelled. Cut it out! The dogs! The dogs! The dogs!

And that was right, of course. He had known about the dogs and of Quester's plan and the plan was working.

The dogs were swerving, digging in their claws to halt their headlong rush, whimpering and yelping in sudden abject fright at this apparition which had replaced the wolf they had been chasing.

There was too much energy. Thinker realized with a prick of fear. Far too much—more than he could handle.

He got rid of it.

He flared.

Crackling lightning flashed and the valley for a moment was lit up by the flare. The paint out on the house curled and blackened, peeled.

The dogs, leaping back across the fence, howled as the lightning speared out at them. They fled, their tails tucked tight, their blistered rumps still smoking.

27

Willow Grove, Blake told himself, was a town that he had known sometime in the past. Which was impossible, of course. Perhaps a place very like a place that he might have read of, or at some time had seen a picture of, but he never had been here.

And yet, as he stood on the street corner in the early morning light, old memories kept nagging at him and a pattern in his mind kept matching the things that he was seeing—the way the steps up to the bank ran kitty-cornered off the sidewalk, and the massive elm trees that grew around the little park at the far end of the street. There would be, he knew, a statue in the park, standing in the center of a fountain that was dry more often than it ran, and an ancient cannon mounted on its massive wheels, its barrel bespecked by pigeon dirt.

Not always matching, but also noting differences. A hobby shop and jewelry store occupied the building where the garden store had been and a new front had been imposed upon the barber shop, which still was a barber shop, and over all of it, over the entire street and town, lay an oldness that had not been there when he last had seen it.

Last had seen it!

Could he, he wondered, have ever seen this town?

How could he have seen it and forgotten it till now? For, technically at least, he should be in possession of all he'd ever known. In that instant back in the hospital it all had come back to him—all that he had been, all that he had done. And if that had been so, why and how had the memory of Willow Grove been withheld from him?

An old town—almost an ancient town—no flying houses perched on their gridded foundation blocks, no airy masses of apartment complexes rising on its outskirts. Solid, honest buildings built of wood and brick and stone, built where they were meant to stay, with no roving tendencies tied into their functions. Some of them, he saw, however, had solar power plants spread awkwardly across their roofs and on the edge of town there had been a larger municipal solar plant, apparently used to pump energy into those houses which were not so equipped.