The Werewolf Principle

11

In the parking lot across the street a man carried a tub out of the back door of one of the houses and set it on the patio at the edge of the pool. A tree was planted in the tub and when the man had set it down and moved away the tree began to ring — emitting a sound like the happy ringing of many silver bells.

Blake, sitting on a chair and wrapped in a robe of candy-coloured stripes, leaned his elbows on the railing five storeys above the street, and strained his ears, trying to make certain that the ringing really came from the tree. It seemed incredible, but there had been no such silver sound until the tub in which the tree was planted had been set beside the pool. And his ears told him that the sound did, indeed, come from the direction of the house.

Washington dozed in the blue smokiness of a late October afternoon. A few ground cars went past on the boulevard below, their air jet making soft, sighing sounds as they moved along. In the far distance, over the Potomac, a few floaters bobbed along — floating chairs with humans sitting in them. The houses in the parking lot were lined up in orderly rows, each with its bright green lawn, its beds of brightly coloured autumn flowers, the blue shine of the pools. By leaning forward and craning his neck, he could just make out his own house, down the boulevard, third row from the front, squatting on the foundation where it had put down.

His nearest neighbour on the solarium porch was an elderly man, muffled to the ears in a thick red blanket, blank eyes staring out into the space beyond the railing, seeing nothing, mumbling to himself. A short distance away two patients were playing a game that might have been chequers.

An attendant came hurrying across the porch.

'Mr Blake, he said, 'there is someone here to see you.

Blake rose and turned around. Standing in the door that led out on to the porch was a woman, tall, dark-haired, wearing a robe of pale rose, a material that had the sheen of silk.

'Miss Horton, said Blake. 'Yes, please show her in.

She came across the porch and held out her hand to him. 'I drove down to your village yesterday afternoon, she said, 'and found that you had left.

'I am sorry, said Blake, 'that I was not there. Won't you please sit down.

She seated herself in a chair and Blake perched on the railing.

'You and your father are in Washington, he said. 'The hearings…

She nodded. 'They began this morning.

'You'll be attending some of them, I suppose.

'I suppose, she said. 'But it's a painful thing. It's hard to see my father take the beating he will take. I admire him, of course, for standing on the thing that he believes, but I could wish that, occasionally, he might plop for something that carried public approval. But he almost never does. He's always on the wrong side, so far as the public is concerned. And this one is the one that can really hurt him.

'You mean this business of unanimity. I was reading something about it just the other day. It seems to me a foolish set-up.

'Perhaps it is, she said, 'but that's the way it is. It is carrying the rule of the majority to unnecessary limits. It will half kill the senator if he has to retire from public life. It has been meat and bread to him for all the years he's lived.

'I liked your father very much, said Blake. 'There's something natural about him, something that corresponds to the house you live in.

'You mean old-fashioned.

'Well, maybe. Although that's not it exactly. There is something solid about the man, and yet he has an enthusiasm and an apparent dedication…

'Oh yes, she said. 'He has dedication. And you must admire him for it and I think that mostly people do. But he manages somehow or other to irritate a lot of people by showing them they're wrong.

Blake laughed. 'I don't know of a better way to irritate the people.

'Perhaps, she said. 'But how about yourself?

'I'm getting along quite well, he said. 'There really is no reason why I should be here. Before you came I was sitting here, listening to a tree ring a lot of bells. I couldn't quite believe my senses. A man across the street brought one out of the house and set it by a pool and it began to ring.

She leaned forward to stare across the street. The tree emitted a rippling peal of bonging bells.

'A monastery tree, she said. 'There are not too many of them. A few of them are imported from a planet — one quite far out, I can't recall which one.

'Continually, said Blake, 'I'm running up against these things that are entirely new to me. Things that are outside my entire circle of experience. Just the other day I met a Brownie.

She stared at him, delighted. 'A Brownie! You mean you really did?

He nodded. 'It ate all my lunch. he said.

'Oh, how nice for you! Most people never see one.

'I'd never heard of them, he said. 'I thought that I was having another hallucination.

'Like the time you came to our house.

'That's right. I still don't know what happened that night. There is no explaining it.

'The doctors…

'The doctors don't seem to be much help. They are as puzzled as I am. I think, perhaps, the Brownie might have come the closest to a guess.

'The Brownie? What would he have to do with it?

'He asked me how many there were of me. He said he felt quite sure, when he first saw me, that there was more than one of me. Two men in one, three men in one… I wouldn't know how many. More than one, he said.

'Mr. Blake, she said, 'I think that every man is more than just one man. He has many sides to him.

He shook his head. 'That's not what the Brownie meant. I am sure it wasn't. I've been doing a lot of thinking about it and I'm sure he wasn't talking about different temperaments.

'You've told this to your doctor?

'Well, no, I guess I haven't. The poor guy has enough to worry him. This would be just another thing.

'But important, maybe.

'I wouldn't know, said Blake.

'You act, said Elaine Horton, 'almost as if you didn't care, as if you didn't want to find out what has happened to you. Or, perhaps, that you are afraid to find out."

He glanced sharply at her. 'I hadn't thought of it quite that way, he said, 'but you may well be right.

Across the way the bell-sounds changed — no longer the trilling of many silver bells, but the sonorous clanging of a bell much larger, calling out a warning and a challenge across the rooftops of the ancient city.