The Werewolf Principle

2

Rain slapped Andrew Blake across the face and the very earth was trembling with the deadening crash of thunder, the great masses of riven atmosphere rushing together once again, it seemed, just above his head. The air was sharp with the smell of ozone and he could feel cold mud squishing up between his toes.

And how had he got here — out in a storm, with no cover for his head and with his robe so soaked it dripped, and without his sandals?

He had stepped out after dinner to have a look at a storm that was boiling up across the western wall of mountains — and here, a second later, he was out in that very storm, or, at least, he hoped it was that very storm.

The wind was moaning in a clump of trees and from the foot of the slope on which he stood he could bear the sound of running water and just across the stream light shone out from windows.

His house, perhaps, he thought, befuddled. Although where his house stood there was no slope and no stream of running water. There were trees, but not so many trees, and there should be other houses.

He put up his hand and scrubbed his head in perplexity and the water he squeezed out of his hair ran down across his face.

The rain, which had slackened for a moment, began beating at him once again with a fresh enthusiasm and he turned towards the house. Not his house, surely, but it was a house and there'd be someone there to tell him where he was and…

But tell him where he was! That was insane! A second ago he had been standing on his patio looking at the storm clouds and there had been no rain.

He must be dreaming. Or suffering a hallucination. But the beating rain was not a dreamlike rain and the smell of ozone still was in the air — and who had ever found the smell of ozone reeking through a dream?

He started walking towards the house and as he swung his right foot forward, it came in contact with something hard and a blaze of pain flared through his foot and leg.

In agony, he lifted the foot and waved it in the air, jigging on one leg. The pain drained down into the big toe of the lifted foot and it throbbed in agony.

The foot on which he stood slipped in the mud and he sat down suddenly. Mud spattered as his bottom hit the earth. The ground was wet and cold.

He stayed there. He pulled the foot with the injured toe up into his lap and probed blindly — and carefully and tenderly — at the toe.

It was no dream, he knew. In a dream a man would not be so stupid as to stub his toe.

Something had happened. Something, in a second's time, had transported him, all unknowing, perhaps many miles away from where he'd stood on the patio. Had transported him and set him down in the midst of rain and thunder and in a night so dark there was no seeing anything.

He probed at the toe again and it felt a little better.

Carefully, he picked himself up and tried the injured foot. By walking tensed and slightly spraddled, with the toe stretched upward, he could use the leg.

Limping and fumbling and slipping in the mud, he made his way down the slope and across the little stream, which ran ankle deep, then climbed the slope that went up to the house.

Lightning flared along the horizon and for a moment he saw the house silhouetted against the flare, a massive pile, with heavy chimneys and windows set deep, like eyes, into the stone.

A stone house, he thought. An anachronism! A stone house and someone living in it.

He ran into a fence, but without any hurt, for he was moving slowly. He followed it blindly by feel and came to a gate. Beyond the gate three little rectangles of light marked what he took to be the location of a door.

Flat stones lay underneath his feet and he followed them. Near the door he slowed his walk to a cautious shuffle. There might be steps leading to the door and one stubbed toe was all he cared to have.

There were steps. He found them with the still tender toe and stood for a moment, stiff and straight and shuddering, with clenched teeth, until the worst pain ebbed away.

Then he climbed the steps and found the door. He hunted for the signal, but there was no signal — not even a bell or buzzer. He hunted some more and found the knocker.

A knocker? Of course, he told himself, a house like this would have a knocker. A house so deep into the past…

A wild fear surged through him. Not space, but time, he wondered. Had he been moved (if he had been moved) not in space, but time?

He lifted the knocker and hammered with it. He waited. There was no sign he had been heard. He hammered once again.

A footstep crunched behind him and a cone of light speared out and caught him. He spun about and the round eye of light held steady, blinding him. Behind the light he sensed the vague figure of a man, the faint outline of a deeper shadow against the darkness of the night.

Back of him the door jerked open and light from the inside of the house flooded out and now be 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 1o where he stood.

The senator, he saw, was a tall, lean man, with close clipped white hair and a silvery moustache, 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 woollen robe, Blake climbed the stairs and went in the first door on the left. Through the door to the right ho 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 on top of 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.