The Werewolf Principle (2 page)

Back of him the door jerked open and light from the inside of the house flooded out and now he saw the man who held the torch, a kilted figure, with a sheepskin jacket and in his other hand a glint of metal that Blake took to be a gun.

The man who had opened the door asked sharply, “What is going on out here?”

“Someone trying to get in, senator,” said the man who held the torch. “He must have managed to slip past me.”

“He slipped past you,” said the senator, “because you were huddled somewhere, hiding from the rain. If you fellows have to play at being guards, I wish you'd do some guarding.”

“It was dark,” protested the guard, “and he slipped past …”

“I don't think he slipped past,” said the senator, “He just walked up and banged the knocker. If he'd been trying to sneak in, he'd not have used the knocker. He walked in, like any ordinary citizen, and you didn't see him.”

Blake turned slowly to face the man standing in the door.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he said. “I didn't know. I didn't mean to raise a ruckus. I just saw the house …”

“And that's not all, senator,” broke in the guard. “There've been strange things out tonight. Just a while ago I saw a wolf …”

“There are no wolves about,” said the senator. “There are no wolves at all. There haven't been for a century or more.”

“But I saw one,” wailed the guard. “There was that big flash of lightning and I saw it, on the hill across the creek.”

The senator said to Blake, “I'm sorry to keep you standing with all this bickering. It's no night to be out.”

“It seems that I am lost,” said Blake, fighting to keep his teeth from chattering. “If you'll tell me where I am and point out the way …”

“Turn off that light,” the senator told the guard, “and get back to your job.”

The torch snapped off.

“Wolves, indeed!” said the senator, incensed.

To Blake, he said, “If you'd step in, so I could close the door.”

Blake stepped in and the senator closed the door behind him.

Blake looked around him. He stood in a foyer flanked on either side by floor to ceiling doors and in the room beyond a fire burned in a great stone fireplace. The room was crammed with heavy furniture upholstered in bright prints.

The senator stepped past him and stopped to look at him.

“My name is Andrew Blake,” said Blake, “and I am afraid I am messing up your floor.”

Rain dripping from his robe had made puddles on the floor and a line of wet footprints led from the door to where he stood.

The senator, he saw, was a tall, lean man, with close-clipped white hair and a silvery mustache, beneath which was a firm, straight mouth that had a trap-like quality. He wore a robe of white, with a purple jigsaw motif worked around its edges.

“You look like a drowning rat,” said the senator, “if you don't mind my saying so. And you have lost your sandals.”

He turned and opened one of the flanking doors to reveal a rack of clothing. Reaching in, he pulled out a thick, brown robe.

“Here,” he said, handing it to Blake. “This should serve. Real wool. I take it you are cold.”

“Just a bit,” said Blake, jaw aching to keep his teeth from chattering.

“Wool will warm you up,” said the senator. “You don't see it often. Nothing but synthetics any more. You can get it from a mad man who lives in the Scottish hills. Thinks much the way I do—that there still is virtue in staying close to old realities.”

“I am sure you're right,” said Blake.

“Take this house,” said the senator. “Three centuries old and still as solid as the day that it was built. Built of honest stone and wood. Built by honest workmen.…” He looked sharply at Blake. “But here I stand declaiming while you are slowly freezing. Take those stairs off to the right. The first door to the left. That would be my room. You'll find sandals in the closet and I suppose your shorts are soaked as well.…”

“I'd suppose they are,” said Blake.

“You'll find shorts, anything else that you may need in the dresser. The bath is to the right as you go in. It wouldn't hurt a bit if you took ten minutes of a hot tub. Meanwhile I'll have Elaine rustle up some coffee and I'll break out a bottle of good brandy.…”

“You must not put yourself out,” said Blake. “You have done too much …”

“Not a bit of it,” said the senator. “I'm glad that you dropped in.”

Clutching the woolen robe, Blake climbed the stairs and went in the first door on the left. Through the door to the right he saw the white gleam of the tub. That hot bath idea was not too bad, he told himself.

He walked into the bath, dropped the brown robe atop a hamper and took off the bedraggled robe he wore and dropped it to the floor.

In surprise he glanced down at himself. He was as naked as a jaybird. Somewhere, somehow, he had lost his shorts.

3

The senator was waiting when Blake came back to the big room with the fire. He was sitting in a chair and on the arm of it perched a dark-haired woman.

“Well,” said the senator, “here you are, young man. You told me your name, but I am afraid that it slipped my mind.”

“The name is Andrew Blake.”

“I'm sorry,” said the senator. “My mind does not seem to have the retentive power that it once commanded. This is my daughter, Elaine, and I am Chandler Horton. No doubt, from the yammering of that fool outside, you gathered that I'm a senator.”

“I am honored, senator,” said Blake, “and, Miss Elaine, very pleased to meet you.”

“Blake?” said the girl. “I have heard the name somewhere. Very recently. Tell me, what are you famous for?”

“Why, not a thing,” said Blake.

“But it was in all the papers. And you were on dimensino—the live, news part of it. Now I know! You are the man who came back from the stars.…”

“You don't say,” said the senator, heaving himself from the chair. “How very interesting. Mr. Blake, that chair over there is very comfortable. Place of honor, you might say. Next to the fire and all.”

“Daddy,” Elaine said to Blake, “has a tendency to wax baronial, or maybe country-squirish, when company drops in. You must never mind him.”

“The senator,” said Blake, “is a very gracious host.”

The senator picked up a decanter and reached for glasses.

“You'll recall,” he said, “that I promised you some brandy.”

“And,” said Elaine, “be careful that you praise it. Even if it gags you. The senator prides himself as a judge of brandy. And if, a little later, you would like some coffee, we can have that, too. I punched the autochef.…”

“The chef act up again?” asked the senator.

Elaine shook her head. “Not especially. Got the coffee, just the way I asked—plus fried eggs and bacon.”

She looked at Blake. “Want some eggs and bacon? I think they still are warm.”

He shook his head. “No, thank you very much.”

“The contraption,” said the senator, “has been on the fritz for years. One spell, no matter what you dialed, it served up roast beef, rare.”

He handed around the glasses and sat down in his chair. “That's why I like this place,” he said. “Uncomplicated domicile. It was built three hundred years ago by a man who cared for dignity and had a certain ecological sense that made him build it of native limestone and the timber that grew upon the tract. He did not impose his house upon the habitat; he made it part of it. And, except for the autochef, it has not a single gadget.”

“We're old fashioned,” said Elaine. “I have always felt that living in a place like this was akin—well, say, to taking up one's residence in a sod shanty in the twentieth century.”

“Nevertheless,” said Blake, “it has a certain charm. And a sense of security and solidity.”

“You are right, it has,” said the senator. “Listen to that wind trying to get it. Listen to that rain.”

He swirled the brandy in his glass.

“It doesn't fly, of course,” he said, “and it won't talk to you. But who wants a house to fly and …”

“Daddy!” said Elaine.

“You must excuse me, sir,” said the senator. “I have my enthusiasms and I like to talk about them and sometimes I let them run away with me—and there are times, I would suspect, when I have bad manners. My daughter said something about seeing you on dimensino.”

“Of course, Daddy,” said Elaine. “You never pay attention. You're so wrapped up in the bioengineering hearings that you don't pay attention.”

“But, my dear,” said the senator, “the hearings are important. The human race must decide before too long what to do with all these planets we are finding. And I tell you that terraforming them is the solution of a lunatic. Think of all the time that it will take and the money that it will swallow up.”

“By the way,” said Elaine, “I forgot. Mother phoned. She won't be home tonight. She heard about the storm and is staying in New York.”

The senator grunted. “Fine. Bad night for traveling. How was London? Did she say?”

“She enjoyed the performance.”

“Music hall,” the senator explained to Blake. “Revival of an ancient entertainment form. Very primitive, I understand. My wife is taken with it. She is an arty person.”

“What a horrible thing to say,” said Elaine.

“Not at all,” said the senator. “It's the truth. But to get back to this business of bioengineering. Perhaps, Mr. Blake, you have some opinions.”

“No,” said Blake, “I can't say that I have. I find myself somewhat out of touch.”

“Out of touch? Oh, yes, I suppose you would be. This business of the stars. I recall the story now. Encapsulated, as I remember it, and found by some asteroid miners. What system was it, now?”

“Out in the Antares neighborhood. A small star—just a number, not a name. But I remember none of that. They waited to revive me until I was brought to Washington.”

“And you remember nothing?”

“Not a thing,” said Blake. “My life began, so far as I'm concerned, less than a month ago. I don't know who I am or …”

“But you have a name.”

“A mere convenience,” said Blake. “One that I picked out. John Smith would have done as well. It seems a man must have a name.”

“But, as I recall it, you had background knowledge.”

“Yes—and that is a strange thing. A knowledge of the earth and of its people and of its ways, but in many ways hopelessly outdated. I continually am astounded. I stumble into customs and beliefs and words that are unfamiliar to me.”

Elaine said, quietly, “You don't need to talk about it. We hadn't meant to pry.”

“I don't mind,” Blake told her. “I've accepted the situation. It's a strange position to be in, but some day I may know. It may come back to me—who I am and where I came from and when. And what happened out there. At the moment, as you may understand, I am considerably confused. Everyone, however, has been considerate. I was given a house to live in. And I've not been bothered. It's in a little village.…”

“This village?” asked the senator. “Nearby, I presume.”

“I don't actually know,” said Blake. “Something funny happened to me. I don't know where I am. The village is called Middleton.”

“That's just down the valley,” said the senator. “Not five miles from here. It would seem that we are neighbors.”

“I went out after dinner,” Blake told them. “I was on the patio, looking toward the mountains. A storm was coming up. Big black clouds and lightning, but still a good ways off. And then, suddenly, I was on the hill across the creek from this place and the rain was coming down and I was soaked …”

He stopped and set down his brandy glass, carefully, on the hearth. He stared from one to the other of them.

“That's the way it was,” he said. “I know that it sounds wild.”

“It sounds impossible,” said the senator.

“I am sure it does,” said Blake. “And there was not only space, but time, as well, involved. Not only did I find myself some miles away from where I had been standing, but it was night and when I stepped out on the patio dusk had just begun to fall.”

“I am sorry,” said the senator, “that the stupid guard threw the light on you. Finding yourself here must have been shock enough. I don't ask for guards. I don't even want them. But Geneva insists that all senators must be guarded. I don't know exactly why. There is no one, I am sure, thirsting for our blood. Finally, after many years, Earth is at least partway civilized.”

“There is this bioengineering business,” said Elaine. “Feelings do run high.”

“Nothing is involved,” said the senator, “except a determination of policy. There is no reason.…”

“But there is,” she said. “All the Bible Belt fanatics, all the arch conservatives, all the prissy conventionists are dead set against it.”

She turned toward Blake. “Wouldn't you know,” she said, “that the senator, who lives in a house built three hundred years ago and brags about there being not a single gadget in it …”

“The chef,” said the senator. “You forget the chef.”

She ignored him. “And brags about not a single gadget in it, would align himself with the wild-eyed bunch, with the arch-progressives, with the far-out gang?”

The senator sputtered. “Not a thing far-out about it. It just makes common sense. It will cost trillions of dollars to terraform a single planet. At a cost much more reasonable, and in a fraction of the time required, we can engineer a human race that could live upon that planet. Instead of changing the planet to fit the man, we change the man to fit the planet.…”

“That's exactly the point,” said Elaine. “That's the point your opponents have been making. Change the man—that's the thing that sticks fast inside their craws. When you got through, this thing that would live upon another planet would not be a man.”