A werewolf among us Read Free

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