A Werewolf Among Us Part 8

"Who's he?" St. Cyr asked.

"His name's Salardi. He came here with a team of archaeologists who were researching some native ruins, and when his job was done he decided to stay."

"A wealthy man?"

"No. He lives with the natives, eats off the land."

Salardi turned the corner at an orange and blue tent and disappeared.

"He doesn't seem to be happy here."

Dane said, "The word is that he's wanted in connection with a crime of some sort in the Inner Galaxy. He joined the scientific expedition to get free pa.s.sage out here toward the rim, away from the Founding Worlds' laws." He started forward again, turned and said, "Come on. Norya's waiting."

Remember Salardi.

I will.

At the trailer door, which stood open, an old woman's voice greeted them before they had started up the steps. "Welcome, Dane. Please bring your detective friend inside."

Dane turned and smiled at St. Cyr. "You see? She has powers."

They went up the metal steps and into the main room of the trailer, closed the door after them. They stood in a candle-lighted chamber, the odor of incense heavy on the air. The furniture here looked hand-carved, each piece made from a ma.s.sive block of wood. Dead Men wood? St. Cyr wondered. In the largest of the chairs, at the far end of the room, sitting with a blanket across her lap and legs, Norya waited for them.

"Here," she said, indicating a pair of chairs directly in front of her.

They sat down.

St. Cyr found it difficult to put an age to the alien face before him, though he was certain that Norya was old, inestimably old. Her eyes were nested in dark wrinkles; furrows cut her brown cheeks like wounds, bracketed her slit mouth. Her dark hair had long ago turned white, and it fell in ropy clumps over her narrow shoulders. When she smiled at St. Cyr, her lipless mouth looked like a gash made by a sharp knife.

"Norya, this is-"

Keeping her gaze fixed on the cyberdetective, she said, "Baker St. Cyr. I know. I've seen this entire meeting in a vision." Her voice was webbed with tiny cracks, like a piece of crumpled isingla.s.s, yet it was loud enough and clear enough to be easily heard.

"What are these-visions like?" St. Cyr asked.

"They come to me at odd moments, when I am unprepared. It is as though, for a few minutes or hours, I am living in the future, not the present." She unfolded her six-fingered hands and placed one on each arm of the chair, as if she were bracing herself. "But you did not come here to hear about my visions. You want to know about the du-aga-klava du-aga-klava."

"Yes"-St. Cyr.

"Please, Norya"-Dane.

"Move your chairs nearer me," she said.

They did this.

"Put a hand over my hand."

St. Cyr covered her left hand, Dane her right.

Her hands were warm and dry.

She closed her eyes.

"Now what?" St. Cyr asked.

"Now I show you the wolf." Crumpled isingla.s.s.

It began insidiously, with a steady dimming of the candles. St. Cyr looked around the room and saw that none of the tapers had been touched-and yet they threw considerably less light than they had only a moment ago. And what light there was had changed from yellow to a gray-green shade that depressed him.

"It happened in my fourteenth year, in the autumn, before the leaves fell, many decades ago." Norya's voice was no more than a strained whisper now, faint, scratchy.

St. Cyr looked back at her, expecting some kind of change, though he could not guess what. She was the same as she had been: old.

He felt a breeze across his face, cool and pleasant.

When he turned to see if the trailer door had been opened, he found that he could no longer see a door. Midpoint in its length, the room grew hazy and metamorphosed into a forest, the slick trunks of the Dead Men rising on every side, spa.r.s.e vegetation tangled across the woodland floor.

A telepathic projectionist.

Yes, St. Cyr thought. And she's a good one.

A moment later, the entire room was gone. He could not see Dane or Norya any longer. He was a disembodied observer, standing several feet above the earth, watching what unfolded at the gypsy camp below.

He saw a child playing in the forest a quarter of a mile from the last of the tents and trailers, a boy no more than seven years old, darting in and out of peculiar rock formations, poking into cul-de-sacs in hopes of finding some adventure. St. Cyr was aware that the boy was Norya's brother. In one of his spelunking efforts, he came across a cavelet that served as a wolfs den. It was occupied. Terrified at the confrontation with the wolf, the boy turned and ran. He did not get too far from the den before the wolf was upon him. Much larger than the boy, the wolf sank teeth into his shoulder and dragged him down. They skidded on fallen leaves, rolled, the boy screaming and the wolf snarling furiously as he worked at the hold he had secured... Since the camp was so close by, several men soon reached the boy and drove away the wolf. Though they carried guns, and though several were good marksmen who placed bullets in the wolf, it loped away, apparently unharmed. The du-aga-klava du-aga-klava, unlike the ordinary wolf, can only be brought down with weapons that have been coated with the sap of the Dead Men... The rescuers carried the boy back to camp, where physicians stopped the bleeding and bandaged his arm. He had entered a coma, however, and he did not rise out of it for nearly two and a half weeks-except those times when his mother came upon him groveling on the floor like an animal. When she tried to touch him and put him to bed, he snapped at her, snarled like the wolf that had bit him. When these seizures took him, there was nothing to do but wait until they pa.s.sed and unconsciousness again claimed him. Then he would be put to bed again. The leaves fell from the Dead Men, souls expelled from purgatory into heaven... The air grew cooler as winter approached. For long days the camp was bathed in light-the whole while that the boy lay stricken... When the new leaves had interlaced and the familiar canopy of darkness lay over them once more, the boy began to improve. He no longer howled, and did not snap at his loved ones; he had ceased to froth at the mouth. He had lost a great deal of weight, but he gained it back swiftly, his appet.i.te ravenous. Completely out of his comatose state now, he slowly grew tolerant of bright lights, though he shied away from them when it was at all possible to do so, always choosing to sit in the most dimly lighted corner. Within another month, his sickness was all but forgotten, except when the family prayed and gave thanks for his recovery. At about this time, the first of the children was attacked and killed by a wolf. It happened at night, when some of the children were playing a form of hide-and-seek in the backlot of the trailers, while the adults were all in towards the center of the camp for a celebration. A week later another child was killed, also at night, but this time while he slept alone in his mother's tent. Though the men banded together to hunt down the rogue wolf, they found no trace of the animal. All the nearby dens had been deserted earlier as the animals moved into the low country for the winter. Soon they began to murmur among themselves, form theories based on legends. The wolf, they said, was more than an ordinary wolf. The third child to be attacked was playing with Norya's brother when the wolf jumped her. According to the boy, he frightened the beast off before it could do the girl much harm. She was hysterical, but spoke lucidly enough to point the finger at the boy. He was the wolf, she said. They had been playing, and suddenly he jumped her and he had fangs and his hands had become claws, and he had almost killed her... It was necessary, then, to execute the boy by forcing him to consume a cup of poison made from the bark of the Dead Men. And when he was gone, there were no more murders, no more- The vision of the dead boy-face contorted by the poison, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling of the tent-faded from view, as if his flesh were nothing more than smoke.

It was, of course, even less than that.

Beyond the tent, the green-gray forest melted.

Reality intruded: heavy furniture, flickering candles, an old woman with a blanket across her knees...

"I would like to know-" St. Cyr began.

Dane said, "She's sleeping."

"When will she wake?"

"Perhaps not until morning. It was a hard thing for her to do, but she knew she had to warn us."

"What now?"

"We leave. What else?"

Outside, they stood against a thick Dead Man's trunk and breathed the stale air out of their lungs. "It meant nothing," St. Cyr said.

"How can you say that?" Dane turned to face him, angry. "You saw how the weapons had no effect on the wolf that bit her brother."

"The marksmen were nervous-at least, they were in the re-creation that we saw. They could easily have missed and sworn they hit to preserve their reputations."

"What about his sickness?"

"The same sickness that everyone got when bitten by a wolf. They carried bacteria. I have the report on them from Climicon."

"What about the aversion to light?"

"A symptom in many diseases where the eye may be infected."

Dane shook his head violently. "But that's not all. What about the second child who was killed, the one sleeping in a tent? Would a wild animal enter a civilized habitat for prey?"

"It might. It's more probable than Norya's werewolf."

"And the fact that the men searched but could find no wolf in the neighborhood?"

"They did not search well enough. Or it eluded them."

Dane said, "What about the child's story, the little girl who was nearly the third victim?"

"She knew she was playing with Norya's brother," St. Cyr explained patiently. "She was not expecting anything else. When the wolf jumped her, she became hysterical. She saw the boy driving it off, and in her hysteria, having heard the rumors about a du-aga-klava du-aga-klava, it all became twisted in her mind until the boy was the wolf, the wolf was the boy."

"That's a shaky explanation, don't you think?"

"No," St. Cyr said. "When you're a detective for long, you learn that no witness ever reports things quite the way they were; sometimes they don't get it remotely as it was. A child of the girl's age is an even more unreliable source of information."

"You're saying they killed an innocent boy, one who wasn't possessed?"

"I'm afraid it looks that way to me."

Dane struck one palm with the other fist. "But, dammit, you saw him metamorphosing into a wolf. You saw him trying to tear out the girl's throat!"

"No, all that I saw was Norya's re-creation of the way she thought thought it was. She was not present when the little girl was attacked; she was only replaying it as she was told it had happened." it was. She was not present when the little girl was attacked; she was only replaying it as she was told it had happened."

"But she sees the future clearly-why not the past too?"

"She's precognitive, yes. But, like most precogs, she can't make use of that power at will-let alone employ it to dredge up bits of the past at which she was not ever present. She's a telepathic projectionist, Dane, one who produced some colorful fantasies for us, nothing more."

"I think you're wrong."

"I think I'm not. But I'm still glad that I came with you. Up until now, I had given the du-aga-klava du-aga-klava theory more credence than it deserved-if only in the sense that I considered the possibility of a wolf-transmitted lycanthropic bacterium. Now, having seen the quality of the facts upon which these legends are built, I've rejected the werewolf notion altogether." theory more credence than it deserved-if only in the sense that I considered the possibility of a wolf-transmitted lycanthropic bacterium. Now, having seen the quality of the facts upon which these legends are built, I've rejected the werewolf notion altogether."

A fine decision.

Dane didn't agree with the bio-computer's a.n.a.lysis. "You'll see yet," he said. "Norya is right; I'm sure she is."

St. Cyr said, "I'm also glad I came along because I got to meet Salardi. Or I will meet him. Which tent or trailer is his?"

"There," Dane said, pointing to a yellow and green tent painted in swirling, abstract patterns. "But what do you want from him?"

"It's occurred to me that a man running from a criminal offense in the Inner Galaxy, living only a couple of hours from your house, might be a likely suspect."

"What would Salardi have against us? We hardly know him."

"Perhaps he has nothing against you. Let's go see if we can find out, though." He walked off toward the gaily colored tent.

Salardi came to the flap the second time they called his name, pushed through, and stood before them, obviously determined not to invite them inside. "What is it?" he asked.

St. Cyr introduced himself, though he saw Salardi's eyes narrow at the mention of "detective."

"I wonder if you'd mind answering a few questions."

Salardi wiped at his beard, thinking it over, looked at Dane, then said, "Go ahead. I'll tell you when I've heard enough of them."

"How long have you lived with the gypsies?"

"Four years."

"You're an archaeologist?"

"No."

"But I understood you came here with-"

"I'm a roboticist by profession, an archaeologist by avocation. I came with the expedition to oversee their limited-response robots."

"And you remained behind."

Salardi said nothing.

"Why do you stay here, among those of another species, without any of the comforts of modern life?"

"I like them; that's it. As simple as that. I think they've gotten a lousy deal from the fedgov right down the line. I'd rather live among them than among my own kind. My own kind shame me."

"How have they gotten a lousy deal?" St, Cyr asked.

Salardi folded his arms across his barrel chest and said, "The fedgov always says that planets are colonized without war. I found, when I was with the diggers here, that there had been a war, a d.a.m.n short and violent war, when the Darmanians were dispossessed. They were primitive, but with a high degree of artistic achievement and the most carefully structured social system I've ever seen. We knocked them down, killed more than half of them, and let another quarter die out from Earth-borne diseases. That's long in the past now, but it still haunts me. What we did here was inexcusable. Do you know that these people did not know anything of war before we came? There were perhaps half a billion of them across the globe, and they never once took arms against each other. The fedgov's war of annexation was grotesque. In two months, only two hundred thousand natives remained. And then the disease... And now that it's clear that violence against other intelligent creatures is beyond them, the fedgov lets them go, lets them wander in quasi-poverty on a planet made over for the rich. That That is how they've gotten a lousy deal." is how they've gotten a lousy deal."

The man spoke with the fiery eloquence of a fanatic on the subject. St, Cyr used his present lack of emotional balance to ask him: "Then you aren't running from criminal prosecution in the Inner Galaxy, as everyone says?"

Salardi dropped his arms and balled his fists at his side. His face colored suddenly. "I've heard enough questions," he said. He turned and entered his tent, pulled the flap shut and tied it down from within.

Dane brooded on the ride down from the gypsy camp, drove too fast for the condition of the road. St. Cyr ignored him, trusting to Fate and the boy's own desire to live to get them safely home again.

When they had been driving for an hour, Dane suddenly spoke: "What about the fits the boy threw when he was sick-snapping at people and growling like an animal?"

"It's a common symptom of the disease, according to Climicon. It sounds like a relative of an epileptic fit."