The Werewolf Principle Read online

  Within his brain he felt Quester stirring frantically.

  —No! No! He screamed at Quester. Let me handle this.

  Quester quieted down.

  “It’s interesting,” Blake said to Wilson. “Thanks for showing me. Have they gotten around to posting a reward?”

  Wilson flicked his wrist to fold the paper, put it back on the corner of his desk.

  “All you have to do,” said Blake, “is dial the phone. The number of the hospital is …”

  Wilson raised his hand. “It’s no concern of mine,” he said. “I don’t care what you are.”

  “Even if I were a werewolf.”

  “Even if you were,” said Wilson. “You can turn around and leave if that should be your wish and I’ll go back to work. But if you want to stay, there are a couple of questions I am supposed to ask you and if you can answer them …”

  “Questions?”

  “Yes. Just two simple questions.”

  Blake hesitated.

  “I am acting,” Wilson told him, “for a client. For a client who died a century and a half ago. This is a matter which has been handed down, generation after generation, within the fabric of this law firm. My great-grandfather was the man who accepted the responsibility of carrying out the request of the client.”

  Blake shook his head, trying to shake the fog out of his brain. There was something terribly wrong here. He had known it the moment he had seen the town.

  “All right,” he said. “Go ahead and ask your questions.”

  Wilson pulled a desk drawer open, took out two envelopes. One he laid aside, the other he opened, taking out a sheet of paper that crackled when he unfolded it.

  The attorney held the sheet in front of him, squinting closely at it.

  “All right, Mr. Blake,” he said. “First question: What was the name of your first grade teacher?”

  “Why, her name was,” said Blake, “her name was …”

  He groped blindly for the answer and all at once he had it.

  “Her name was Jones,” he said. “Miss Jones. Ada Jones, I think. It was so long ago.”

  But it was, somehow, not so long ago. Even as he said how long ago it was, he suddenly could see her in his mind. Prim, old-maidish, with a fuzzy hair-do and a stern set to her mouth. And she’d worn a purple blouse. How could he have forgotten that purple blouse she wore?

  “O.K.,” said Wilson. “What did you and Charley Breen do to Deacon Watson’s watermelons?”

  “Why,” said Blake, “we—say, how did you find out about that one?”

  “Never mind,” said Wilson. “Just go ahead and answer.”

  “Well,” said Blake, “I guess it was a dirty trick. We both felt badly after we had done it. We never told any one. Charley stole a hypodermic from his father—his old man was a doctor, I suppose you know.”

  “I don’t know a thing,” said Wilson.

  “Well, we took this syringe and we had a jar of kerosene and we gave each of the melons a squirt of kerosene. We poked the needle through the rind. Not much, you understand. Just enough so the melons would have a funny taste.”

  Wilson laid down the paper and picked up the other envelope.

  “You passed the test,” he said. “I guess that this is yours.”

  He handed the envelope to Blake.

  Blake took it and saw that there was writing on its face—the words formed in the shaky penmanship of the very old, the ink faded to a faint, dull brown.

  The writing said:

  To The Man Who Has My Mind

  And underneath that line a signature:

  Theodore Roberts

  Blake’s hand shook and he let it fall straight to his side, still clutching the envelope, and he tried to hold it stiff and straight so it would stop its shaking.

  For now he knew—now he knew again, now it was all there, all the things he had forgotten, all the old identities and faces.

  “That is me,” he said, forcing his stiff lips to move. “That was me. Teddy Roberts. I am not Andrew Blake.”

  28

  He came to the great iron gates, which were locked, went through the postern gate and found the gravel path that went winding up the rise. Below him lay the town of Willow Grove and here, all about him, their places marked by the canted, moss-grown stones, hemmed in by the pines and the ancient fence of iron, lay all those old ones who had been young when he had been a boy.

  “Follow the path to the left,” Wilson had told him. “You’ll find the family plot halfway up the hill, just to the right. But Theodore, you know, is not really dead. He’s in the Mind Bank and he’s in you as well. It’s just his body up there. I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I,” said Blake, “but I feel I have to go.”

  And so he’d gone, climbing the steep, rough road, seldom used, to the cemetery gates. And as he climbed the hill he thought that of all the town the cemetery looked the most familiar to him. The pine trees, inside the iron fence, were larger and taller than he’d remembered them and, if possible, even in the full light of the day, were darker and more somber than he had thought they’d be. But the wind, moaning through their heavy needles, played a dirge that came straight out of boyhood memories.

  Theodore, the letter had been signed. But it had not been Theodore, rather it was Teddy. Little Teddy Roberts, and later on, still Teddy Roberts, young physicist out of Caltech and MIT, before whom the universe had lain a bright and shining mechanism that cried for understanding. The Theodore would come later—Dr. Theodore Roberts, an old and weighty man, with slow step and ponderous voice, and with his hair turned white. And that was a man, Blake told himself, he had never known and would never know. For the mind he carried, the mind that had been impressed upon his synthetic brain, inside his synthetic body, had been the mind of Teddy Roberts.

  Now all he needed to do to talk with Teddy Roberts was to pick up a phone and dial the Mind Bank number and identify himself. And then, with a little wait, perhaps, there would be a voice and behind the voice the mind of Theodore Roberts. But not the voice of the man himself, for the voice had been lost in death, nor the mind of Teddy Roberts, but the older, wiser, more steady mind that had grown from the mind of Teddy Roberts. It would do no good, he thought; it would be a stranger talking. Or would it? For it had been Theodore, not Teddy, who had written him the letter, a man writing from his deep old age, the feeble, shaky hand spelling out the greeting and the message.

  Could the mind be man? Or was the mind a lonely thing that stood apart from man? How much of man was mind, how much was the body? And how much of humanity did he, himself, represent when he resided as a simple human notion inside of Quester’s body—how much less, perhaps, inside of Thinker’s body? For Thinker was a being from far outside the human concept, a biological engine that converted energy, with senses that did not entirely correspond with the human sense, with a logic-instinct-wisdom that took the place of mind.

  Inside the postern gate he halted and stood in the deep shadow of the pines. The air was heavy with the scent of evergreen and the wind was moaning and far up the hill a man was working among the moss-grown slabs of granite, the sun flashing on the tool he used as he labored in the quietness of the morning light.

  The chapel stood beside the gate, the ancient clapboard whiteness of its walls shining in the green shadows of the pines, its steeple stretching upward, trying, but failing, to match the tallness of the trees. Through the open door, Blake glimpsed the soft glow of lights, within.

  Walking slowly, Blake went past the chapel and started up the walk. Beneath his feet the gravel grated as it shifted. Halfway up the hill and to the right. And when he got there he’d find the marker that proclaimed quietly to the world that the body of Theodore Roberts lay in the earth beneath.

  Blake hesitated.

  Why did he want to go?

  To visit the place where lay his body—no, not his body, but the body of the man whose mind he wore.

  And if that mind were still alive—if tw
o minds were still alive—what did the body matter? It was a husk and its death should occasion no regret and its resting place was of no consequence.

  Slowly he turned back down the path, heading for the gate. When he reached the chapel, he stopped and stood looking, through the gate, down upon the town.

  He was not ready to go back to the town, he knew—if he ever should be ready. For when he walked into that town again, he must know what to do. And he did not know what to do. He had no ideas what to do.

  He turned and went up the walk to the chapel and sat down on the steps.

  What should he do now? he wondered. What was left to do?

  Now, finally knowing who he was, there was no further need of running. Now he had the ground to stand on, but the ground was meaningless.

  He reached into the pocket of his robe and took out the letter. Unfolding it, he sat hunched upon the step, going over it again:

  My dear Sir: Which, I suppose, may be a strange and awkward way of addressing you. I have tried other salutations and all of them sounded wrong, so I must fall back upon the one which, while it may seem too formal, at least is dignified.

  By now, of course, you know who I am and who you are, so there is no need of any explanation concerning our relationship, which I take to be the first of its kind upon this earth, and perhaps a bit embarrassing to the both of us.

  I have lived in hope that someday you would be back and the two of us might sit down, perhaps with drinks in hand, and spend a pleasant hour in comparing notes. Now I have some fear that you may not be coming back, since you have been gone so long, I fear something may have happened that will prevent your coming back. But even if you did, for me to see you your coming must be soon, for the end of life draws near.

  The end of life, I say, and yet this is not entirely true. The end of life, of course, so far as I am physically concerned. But my mind will continue to exist in the Intelligence Depository—one mind among many others, able to continue functioning as an independent unit, or acting in collaboration, as a sort of panel or advisory board, with other minds which are existing there.

  It has been with some hesitation that I have finally accepted the nomination. I realize, of course, the honor of it, but even having accepted, I am not convinced of the wisdom of it, either for myself or for humanity. I am not certain that a man can live comfortably as a mind alone, and I am afraid, as well, that humanity, in time, may come to depend too heavily upon the accumulated wisdom and knowledge which is contained within the so-called Mind Bank. If we remain, as is the situation today, simply as an advisory board to which questions may be submitted for consideration and recommendation, then the bank may serve a useful purpose. But if the world of men ever comes to depend upon the wisdom of the past alone, glorifying it or deifying it, bowing to it and ignoring the wisdom of their present, then we will become a hindrance and a detriment.

  I am not certain why I write you this. Possibly because you are the only one I can write it to—for, in many ways, you are actually myself.

  It seems strange that in one lifetime any one man should have been called upon to make two such similar decisions. For when I was selected as the one whose mind should be impressed upon your brain, I felt many of the reservations which I now am feeling. I felt that, in many ways, my mind might not be the kind of mind that would be the best for you. I had prejudices and biases that might be a disservice to pass on. All these years I have not been easy about it, wondering often if my mind had served you well or ill.

  Man, indeed, has come far from the simple beast he was when we consider questions such as these. I have sometimes wondered if we might not have come too far, if in the vanity of intelligence we may not be treading upon forbidden ground. But these thoughts have come to me only lately. They are the accumulated doubts of a man who is growing old and so should be discounted.

  It must seem to you that this letter is a rambling one, and to little purpose. If you will bear with me, I shall try to get, within a reasonable space of time, to the little purpose it may have.

  Through the years I have thought of you often and have wondered how you were, if you were still alive and if still alive, when you would come back. I think that you must realize by now that some, perhaps even many, of the men who fabricated you thought of you only as a problem in biochemistry. I think that by this time, having lived with it all these years, you will not be disturbed by so frank a statement. I think that you must be the kind of man who would realize it and accept it.

  But I have never thought of you in any other way than as another human, in all truth a man very like myself. As you know, I was an only child. I had no brother and no sister. I have often wondered if I have thought of you as the brother that I never had. But in late years I think I know the truth of that. You are not a brother. You are closer than a brother. You are my second self, equal to me in every way and never secondary.

  And it is in the hope that, if you do return, even if I physically am dead, you may want to contact me that I write this letter. I am very curious about what you have been doing and what you may be thinking. It has seemed to me that, in view of where you’ve been and the work you have been doing, you may have developed some interesting and illuminating viewpoints.

  Whether you do contact me must be left to your own judgment. I am not entirely sure that the two of us should talk, although I’d like to very much. I’ll leave it up to you in all confidence that you’ll know what’s best to do.

  I am, at the moment, very much concerned with the question of whether it is wise for the mind of one man to go on and on. It occurs to me that, while mind may be the greater part of any man, man is not mind alone. There is more involved in man than wisdom and memory and the ability to absorb facts and develop viewpoints. Can a man orient himself in the never-never land such as must exist when the mind alone survives? He may remain a man, of course, but there still is the question of his humanity. Does he become more or less than human?

  Perhaps, if you feel it is proper we should talk, you can tell me what you think of all of this.

  But if you believe it is better that we remain apart, please be assured that if I should somehow know, I would understand. And in such a case, I would have you know that my best wishes and my love go with you forever.

  Sincerely,

  Theodore Roberts

  Blake folded the letter and thrust it back into the pocket of his robe.

  Still Andrew Blake, he thought, and not Theodore Roberts. Teddy Roberts, maybe, but never Theodore Roberts.

  And if he sat down before a phone and dialed the Mind Bank number, what would he have to say when Theodore Roberts came upon the line? What could he say? For he had nothing he could offer. They would be two men, each needing help, each looking to the other for the help that neither one could give.

  He could say: I am a werewolf—that’s what the papers call me. I am only part a man, no more than one third a man. The rest of me is something else, something that you’ve never heard of, something that you could not credit, having heard of it. I am no longer human and there’s no place here for me, no place upon the earth. I belong nowhere. I’m a monster and a freak and I can only hurt anyone I touch.

  And that was right. He would hurt anyone he touched. Elaine Horton, who had kissed him—a girl that he could love, that he perhaps already loved. Although he could love her only with the human part of him, with one third of him. And he could hurt her father, that marvellous old man with the ramrod back and the ramrod principles. And hurt as well that young doctor, Daniels, who had been his first, and for a time, his only friend.

  He could hurt them all—he would hurt them all unless …

  And that was it. Unless.

  There was something he must do, some action he must take.

  He searched his mind for this thing that he must do and it was not there.

  He rose slowly from the steps and turned toward the gate, then turned back again and went into the chapel, pacing slowly down the aisle.
r />   The place was hushed and shadowed. An electric candelabra, mounted on the lectern, did little to drive back the shadows, a feeble campfire glow burning in the darkened emptiness of a desolated plain.

  A place to think. A place to scheme, to huddle for a time. A place to array his thoughts and align the situation and see what he must do.

  He reached the front of the building and moved over from the aisle to sit down on one of the seats. But he did not sit down. He remained standing, buttressed by the twilit quiet—a quiet that was emphasized rather than broken by the soft sound of the wind in the pines outside.

  This was the decision point, he knew. Here, finally, he had come to that time and place from which there was no retreat. He had run before, and ran to a certain purpose, but now there was no longer any virtue in the simple and impulsive act of fleeing. For there was no longer any place to flee to—he had reached the ultimate point and now, if he were to run again, he must know what he was running to.

  Here, in this little town, he had found who and what he was and this town was a dead-end. The whole planet was a dead-end and there was no place for him upon this earth, no place for him in humanity.

  For while he was of earth, he could lay no claim to humanity. He was a hybrid, rather—out of man’s terrible scheming had arisen something that had not heretofore existed.

  He was a team, a team of three different beings. That team had the opportunity and the capacity to work upon, and perhaps to solve, a basic universal problem, but it was not a problem that had specifically to do with the planet Earth or the life that resided on the Earth. He could do nothing here and nothing could be done for him.

  On some other planet, perhaps, a bleak and barren planet where there’d be no interference, where there was no culture and no cultural distraction—perhaps there he could perform the function—he, the team, not he the human, but he, the three of them together.

  Out of the mists of time and distance he remembered once again the headiness of the realization, when it had come to them, that within their grasp lay the possibility of resolving the purpose and the meaning of the universe. Or if not of solving it, of digging closer to the core of it than any intelligence had ever dug before.