A Werewolf Among Us

ONE: A Case Begun

Morbidly curious, the squint-eyed customs official examined the two holes in Baker St. Cyr's chest. He touched the flange of warm, yellow plastic that rimmed each of the female jacks, and he tried to determine how the flesh had been coerced into growing onto the foreign material.

St. Cyr would not have been surprised if the man had sent for a flashlight and begun a detailed visual inspection of those two narrow tunnels in St. Cyr's flesh. On a world as serene as Darma, largely given over to the sport of the wealthy, a customs chief would rarely encounter anything unusual; therefore, when one of the four baggage inspectors had turned up an odd piece of machinery in St. Cyr's smallest suitcase, the chief intended, understandably enough, to milk the incident for all its entertainment value.

"Shall we get on with it?" St. Cyr asked.

The customs chief grunted and straightened from his stoop. He turned to the open suitcase on the table beside them and patted the turtle shell, which was not a turtle shell at all.

He said, "Let's see you put it on."

The baggage inspector, a young man with a mop of yellow hair and skin as white as dusting powder, came forward to have a better look. He had found the turtle shell machine, after all. He deserved to share in the demonstration.

St. Cyr, with the gentle familiarity a man might exhibit toward a woman who was a cherished lover, lifted the turtle shell. He turned it on its back, leaned over it and inserted the two male jacks which trailed from it into the pair of plugs on his chest.

The customs chief said, "Well, well."

The dusting powder boy looked ill.

Smiling, St. Cyr lifted the shell and pressed it against his chest, letting the wires slowly retreat into the machine. The shell had been carefully molded to fit his torso and was nowhere more than four inches thick. Now that it was in place, it was hardly distinguishable as a separate entity. "Has it — taken you over yet?" the boy asked.

Patiently, St. Cyr explained that the computer half of his investigatory symbiosis did not "take over" when he was joined with it. "A cyberdetective is part man and part computer, meshed as completely as the two can ever be. The highly microminiaturized components of the bio-computer can recall and relate bits of data in a perfectly mathematical, logical manner that a human mind could never easily grasp, while the human half of the symbiote provides a perception of emotions and emotional motivations that the bio-computer — in its crisp, clean, mathematical universe — could never begin to comprehend. Together, we make a precise and thorough detective unit."

"Well, anyway…" The boy looked at the shell again. "Is it—inside you yet?"

St, Cyr pointed to a smooth, white palm switch on the base of the bio-computer shell, depressed it. Instantly, the computer injected chemical-cohesive filaments into his flesh and painlessly tapped his spinal column and various conglomerates of nerves far more intimately than it could through the two plugs in his chest.

"Now?" the customs chief asked.

St. Cyr nodded.

"You don't look any different." The chief squinted again, as if he expected to catch a quick glimpse of something monstrous behind the eyes of the newly-formed symbiote.

"It doesn't make any noticeable change in me," St. Cyr told him. "On the contrary, you are the one transformed."

The customs chief looked quickly down at himself, uncomprehending. He wiggled his fingers, as if he were afraid they might melt, mingle and become something else altogether.

St. Cyr laughed. "I meant, in my eyes you've been transformed. I see you more clearly and understand your motives more completely than before. The bio-computer improves my perceptions and my analysis of what I sense."

For a moment, as the spinal contacts were being completed and the computer was blending with his own mental functions, he had hallucinated dark shapes that crept from the interior of his mind, hideously ugly beasts that swooped up suddenly, fanged and clawed and wild-eyed. But they passed, as they always did. Now he marveled at the new relationships he saw in everything around him.

"Are you satisfied?" he asked.

The chief nodded. "You can take it off now."

St. Cyr realized that not only backworld curiosity possessed the customs official, but that he was also motivated by an intense jealousy of St. Cyr's role in life — and bitterness that his own had turned out, by comparison, so bland.

"I might as well wear it from here on," St. Cyr said. He picked up his shirt, slipped into it and zipped the front. It was a tight fit now.

"How long do you wear it each day?" the boy asked.

"When I'm on a case, I wear it twenty-four hours a day."

"Even when you sleep?"

"Yes," St, Cyr said, slipping into his jacket, then closing the empty case in which the bio-computer rested. "Even when you sleep, you sense the world around you, and the bio-computer helps you to keep from missing anything. It even interprets my dreams, like a mechanical David."

The boy tried to discern the machine's lines where it blended with St. Cyr's under the clothes. St. Cyr looked like nothing more than a barrel-chested man. "Aren't you afraid of sleeping while it's — inside you?"

"Why should I be? It's only a computer, a machine, robot. Robots can't hurt you. The Laws of Robotics prove that, don't they?"

Though he knew the truth of that, the boy shivered and turned away, left the room.

"Be afraid of men," St. Cyr told the customs chief.

"Men can never be trusted. But a machine is always an ally; it's built to be."

The chief said, "We're finished; you may go. Sorry to inconvenience you."

Ten minutes later, Baker St. Cyr strolled along the main promenade in front of the terminal, enjoying the view of rolling green hills on the resort planet's most hospitable continent. He breathed in the air — free of pollutants and a welcome change from New Chicago, the industrial planet to which his last case had taken him — and looked around, hoping to spot someone who might be there waiting for him.

While he was looking to his right, a voice on his left said, "Are you Mr. St. Cyr?"

The voice was that of a handsome, fair-haired, earnest young boy. When St. Cyr turned, however, he was confronted by a master unit robot as large as he was and at least twice again his weight. It floated on grav-plates, silent. Of course, he thought, the Alderbans would have the very best in modern conveniences, no matter what the cost.

"I'm St.Cyr," he said.

"I am Teddy, the Alderban master unit, and I've come to escort you to the estate." How perfect he would have been in tie and tails.

Teddy, St. Cyr mused. A master unit was almost human, after all. It had been programmed with a distinct personality — always pleasant and efficient — by the Reiss Master Unit Corporation of Ionus. Such a machine was a far more companionable associate than a dog; and men gave names to dogs.

St. Cyr smiled, aware that Teddy could interpret facial expressions. "Hello, Teddy. I'm most anxious to be going."

"I'll take your bags, Mr. St. Cyr."

The master unit extended steel arms from his cylindrical body trunk and gathered the suitcases in thin, ball-jointed fingers. He led the way to the promenade steps, down the concrete approach ramp to a sleek, silver ground car, placed the bags in the trunk and opened St. Cyr's door. When the man was seated, he closed the door and floated around to the other side of the vehicle, where he opened a second door and drifted into the cushionless niche constructed especially for him. With his highly flexible fingers he plugged the steering, braking and acceleration leads into three of the nine sockets that ringed the middle of his body trunk. He drove the car, without hands, from the parking lot onto a wide superhighway, heading away from the lossely architectured sprawl of the city.

For a while, St. Cyr watched the hills pass by. Stands of pine-like trees thrust up like grasping hands before them, loomed over, fell away in a collapse of green fingers. A dear, blue-green river played quick tag with the road for the first fifty miles, then curved abruptly away, down a rock-walled valley, and never returned.

Darma, with its abnormally broad and agreeable equatorial belt, its already good weather improved considerably by Climkon's manipulation of its atmosphere, was idyllic. It was the sort of world to which every man dreamed of retiring as early in life as possible. Few, however, could ever afford to leave their industrial, business-oriented home worlds. Planets like Darma, untouched by the noise, smoke and stench of production, were not developed for the poor or for the well-to-do, but only for the extremely wealthy. Only the richest men could afford to live here permanently, and only the very comfortable could manage even a month-long visit. St. Cyr, then, should have been mesmerized by the vast stretches of untrammeled land, grateful for the chance to breathe such sweet air.

He wasn't.

He was, in fact, bored by it.

Boredom was the major enemy that St. Cyr faced, despite the criminals and potential criminals around whom his profession revolved. Tedium was a backwards-leading road that wound through the tumble-down structures of old memories — memories of times before he had become a cyberdetective, memories of people he would rather forget, of involvements he would just as soon not recall…

He turned to Teddy and said, "You know, of course, why I'm here." He had decided to begin work, even if his first interview had to be with a master unit robot.

"Yes, sir," Teddy said. "To investigate the murders."

"That's correct"

"A nasty business, sir."

"Murder always is, Teddy."

"You require my assistance?"

"I want to hear the general story of the murders."

"You haven't been informed, sir?"

"Yes, I have been. But I would like your version, one that isn't cluttered with emotion."

"I see," Teddy said. He did not swivel the cannister of his "head" or direct the soft, green discs of his sight receptors toward the detective.

"Go on, then."

The robot paused a moment, then spoke, still with the same voice of a boy almost but not quite grown to manhood, a charming and winning voice. St. Cyr could not even catch the switch between word tapes as the machine constructed its sentences.

The first murder occurred four weeks ago, on a Monday morning — Darma has a seven-day week, the same as Earth, though the year contains only forty-eight weeks. The day was pleasant — or, at least, enough of the criteria for a pleasant day were present: cloudless sky, moderate temperatures, little wind. Does that sound like a pleasant day, sir?"

"Yes," St. Cyr said. "Go on. I'll understand that any further value judgments you make are based on a comparison of the events with established standards."

Teddy continued. "The family rose as usual, all except Leon, the oldest boy. When he did not appear at breakfast, the family assumed that he was sleeping in. The Alderbans, due to their wealth, pursue artistic lives and do not, therefore, need to observe a strict routine. Leon's absence, therefore, aroused little if any concern."

The highway began to climb into large, gray mountains where filmy sheets of mist curled through the trees that now grew thickly on both sides.

"When Leon did not appear by noon, his sister Dorothea looked in on him and discovered his corpse. He was lying near the door, his arms outstretched as if he had been trying to crawl to the door and summon help. His throat had been torn out."

"Not cut with a blade?"

'Torn," Teddy said again. "It was a ragged mess. Also, his right arm had very nearly been ripped free of its shoulder socket; blood lay everywhere."

"The authorities?" St. Cyr asked.

He felt a quickening excitement as he considered how such a corpse could have come to its condition. The boredom receded and left him altogether. In the back of his mind, held against a cold black slateboard, was an image of the body. He shivered. He wished the board were the sort he could erase; but his bio-computer partner held the image there, adding to it bit by bit as more pieces of the puzzle were detailed by the master unit.

"The Darmanian police arrived, federal men sent in because of the Alderban name and position. They dusted for fingerprints on every surface in Leon's bedroom. They super-lighted the body, trying to bring out the killer's prints from the background of Leon's own skin patterns. They checked beneath his nails for skin, since he appeared to have fought his assailant, and they thoroughly vacuumed the room for traces of dust, string and hair that might be alien to it. All the laboratory tests failed to produce a single clue. The police were baffled, for such a thorough scanning of a murder scene and corpse had never failed to bring results in the past."

St. Cyr watched the trees, the mist, the bare peaks of the mountains through which they glided. He saw something sinister in them which he had not noticed earlier, though he could not pin down the exact nature of his misgivings. What sort of creature walked beneath trees such as these, through this mist, within sight of such mountains, able to slaughter in such a brutal fashion?

A psychopath, the bio-computer informed him voicelessly. It would not tolerate such a burst of emotionalism without a counter-balancing touch of realism. A psychopath, nothing more.

"The second killing?" St. Cyr asked.

"One week later, the following Monday, Dorothea went for a walk in the vast gardens of the Alderban estate. The gardens stretch for two miles east-west and one mile north-south; they offer many an inspiring view to a poet like Dorothea. When she did not return from her walk at the time she said she would, the family was immediately alarmed. A search of the gardens was initiated. This time, I found the body."

The pines had given out in these higher altitudes to huge, gray-leafed trees that bent across the lanes until, almost touching above the median, they formed a dark tunnel.

The car's lights popped on.

Teddy said, "Dorothea had been mauled exactly as her brother had been, her throat torn through. Her left hip had also been badly mutilated, and the toes of her right foot were gone."

"Gone?"

"At least, they've never been found, sir."

Another car passed them, going toward the city they had left behind, a silvery master unit chauffeuring a young couple. The girl was a pretty brunette.

St. Cyr: "The police were summoned again?"

Teddy: "Yes. The federal men arrived and proceeded to cover the murder scene just as thoroughly as they had done before. They super-lighted the body for fingerprints and found none. They dug under her nails for flesh — found none. They searched the garden for footprints — found none. In one area, however, they had success."

"What was that?" St. Cyr asked. Jubal Alderban, the patriarch of this troubled family, had not told him any of these fascinating details in the light-telegram he had sent, and St. Cyr was desperate for facts.

"They found a wolfs hair in the wound on her neck."

St. Cyr: "Well, there you have it A wolf—"

"Not quite, sir. This could possibly explain Dorothea's death — though there has not been a wild wolf reported on this continent for nearly sixty years, an extinction of species specified in Climicon's plans for Darma — but it most assuredly does not explain Leon's demise. How, for instance, could a wolf get through the door locks, find its way upstairs to Leon's room, kill him, and leave without otherwise causing a disturbance?"

St. Cyr could not explain that.

"Wolves, Mr. St. Cyr, are apt to howl when excited. In the act of chewing and clawing Leon's throat, it would surely have awakened the household or at least drawn my own notice. There was no noise. And when I checked the lock systems, I found them inviolate; the doors had not been opened all night."

"Who is left in the family?" St. Cyr asked. He wished they would come out of the canopy of gray trees and into the sunlight again.

"Five," Teddy said. "There is Jubal Alderban, father of the family and owner of the Alderban Interstellar Corporation, though he has never worked much at the family business. It's nearly all in the hands of trust lawyers, who dole out large monthly allotments to the family. Jubal is a sculptor of galactic renown, as you most likely know. He, as did all the family, underwent psychiatric hypno-keying to stimulate his creative abilities."

They drifted into sunlight again, squinted as the windshield splashed orange and then quickly opaqued in adjustment to the glare. The mountains hung over them again, rotten teeth ready to bite. Then the trees formed another canopy and brought darkness.

"Jubal's wife," Teddy said, "is Alicia. Ten years younger than Jubal, forty-four, an accomplished classical guitarist and composer of ballads in the Spanish tradition. The three remaining children are Dane, the historical novelist, Betty, a better poet than her dead sister, and Tina — who paints. Tina is the most self-sufficient of the lot, Dane the least. Jubal is, of course, concerned about their welfare."

St. Cyr phrased his next question carefully in order to obtain the most, clinical, factual and complete answer that Teddy could give him. "Having observed most of this firsthand, having seen the bodies and known the victims, do you have any theories of your own?" He knew that a Reiss Master Unit was a complete reasoning individual, within certain limits, and he hoped the superior logic of that mind would have some new insight that the police had not come up with.

He was disappointed.

"Nothing of my own, sir. It is truly baffling. There is only what the natives say about it."

"Native Darmanians?"

"Yes, sir."

"What do they say, Teddy?"

"Werewolf, sir."

"Pardon me?"

"I know that it sounds absurd to reasoning creatures like ourselves. The Darmanians say that a werewolf, a creature they call the du-aga-klava, inhabits the hills at the foot of the mountains. The natives are convinced that one of these du-aga-klava has bitten some member of the family, thus transmitting its lycanthropy. That member of the family, by this theory, is the murderer of Leon and Dorothea Alderban."

"As you said, that doesn't really satisfy anyone with the ability to reason clearly."

Teddy said nothing more.

"I noticed," St. Cyr said, "that your tone of voice has been deliberately chosen to indicate doubt. Why is that?"

The car seemed to accelerate slightly, though the detective could not be certain of that. And if he could be certain, what would such a reaction on Teddy's part mean?

"It is not superstitious, Mr. St. Cyr, to believe that there are more things beyond our understanding than we would admit."

"I suppose."

Something here… The bio-computer part of him was disturbed. It had analyzed what the robot had told it — not merely what the robot had said, but how it had said h. It had dissected grammar and inflection, and now it was displeased.

Something there is here… The master unit's words seem designed to conceal. They are not natural to it. It is almost as if someone had gotten to the robot and programmed it to answer this way, programmed it to emphasize the werewolf stories.

But who, St. Cyr wondered, would Teddy be unwittingly trying to protect? Who could have programmed him to slant his story toward the supernatural?

Something there is here…

But, for the time being anyway, St. Cyr was willing to ignore the warning signals. The boredom had been driven out, and that was what counted the most. With his mind occupied, he would not find himself remembering odd moments of the past without really wanting to. And if he did not remember them, he would not be sad. He hated being sad. Thank God for work, for corpses with their throats torn out, for mysteries.

They broke through the mountains and started down the foothills on the other side. For a moment, the sun shone through the break in the ubiquitous trees — then the dark branches and gray leaves enfolded the car once more.