The Werewolf Principle (19 page)

He shifted the knapsack to a more comfortable position on his shoulder and pulled the cowl of the robe more closely about his face. He crossed the street and wandered slowly up the sidewalk and on every hand were little things that jogged loose memories. There were names now as well as places. Jake Woods had been the banker and Jake Woods could, surely, no longer be alive. For if he had ever seen this town, it must have been more than two centuries ago. And Charley Breen and he had run away from school and gone fishing in the creek and had caught some chubs.

It was incredible, he told himself; it was impossible. And yet the memories kept on piling in on him, not vague and shadowy, but incidents and faces and pictures from the past, all three-dimensional. He remembered that Jake Woods had been lame and had carried a cane and he knew what kind of cane it was—one that was heavy and of a shiny, hand-rubbed wood. Charley had had freckles and a wide, infectious grin, and Charley, he remembered, had always led him into trouble. There had been Minnie Short, an old, befuddled woman, dressed in rags and walking with a weird sort of shuffling trot, who had worked part-time as a bookkeeper at the lumber yard. But the lumber yard was gone and in its place stood a glass-and-plastic agency for floaters.

He reached a bench that stood in front of a restaurant across the street from the bank and sat down on it heavily. There were a few people on the street and as they went past they stared at him.

He felt fine. Even after the hard night of Quester's running, his body still was fresh and strong. Perhaps, he told himself, it was because of Thinker's stolen energy—an energy transferred from Thinker to Quester and from Quester on to him.

He slid the knapsack off his shoulder and let it rest beside him on the bench. He slid the cowl back from his face.

People were beginning to open up the shops and stores. A lone car came thrumming gently up the street.

He read the signs and none of them were familiar. The names of the stores and of the people who owned and operated them all had changed.

On the floor above the bank, the windows bore gilt lettering advertising the occupants—dentists, doctors, lawyers. Alvin Bank, M.D.; H. H. Oliver, Dentistry; Ryan Wilson, Attorney-at-Law; J. D. Leach, Optometrist! Wm. Smith——

Wait a minute, there! Back up! Ryan Wilson, that was it!

Ryan Wilson was the name that had been mentioned in the message.

There, across the street, was the office of the man who had indicated in the note that he had something of interest to impart.

The clock above the door of the bank said it was almost nine o'clock. Wilson might be in his office, or would be coming soon. If the office still were closed, he could stay and wait for him.

Blake got up off the bench and crossed the street. The door that opened on the stairs leading to the floor above the bank was rickety and it creaked and groaned as he pushed it open. The stairs were steep and dark and the brown paint that covered the treads was scuffed and peeling off.

Wilson's office was just down the hall, and the door stood open.

Blake went into the outer office, which was empty. In an inner office a man sat in his shirt sleeves, working on some papers, with others stacked high in a basket on the desk.

The man looked up. “Come on in,” he said.

“You are Ryan Wilson?”

The man nodded. “My secretary isn't here as yet. What can I do for you?”

“You sent me a message. My name is Andrew Blake.”

Wilson leaned back in his chair and stared at him.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he finally said. “I never thought I'd see you. I thought you were gone for good.”

Blake shook his head, bewildered.

“Have you seen the morning paper?” Wilson asked.

“No,” said Blake. “I haven't.”

The man reached for a folded copy that lay on the corner of his desk and flicked it open, facing it toward Blake.

The banner screamed:

IS MAN FROM THE STARS A WEREWOLF?

The read-out said:

HUNT STILL GOES ON FOR BLAKE

Plastered underneath the banner, Blake saw, was a picture of himself.

Blake felt his face freezing, fought to keep it frozen, betraying no expression.

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 two 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.