A Werewolf Among Us

want to do only one thing, but you can never do it as well as you hope to.'

'The others feel this way?' he asked.

'They may not vocalize it as readily, but they feel it.'

'It doesn't show,' St. Cyr said.

'Doesn't it?' She turned away from her portrait and faced him. She was no longer emotional, no longer angry with herself. In a level voice, she said, 'Didn't it seem that the family took Betty's death with little emotion?'

'Your mother was in tears.'

'A point for my argument,' she said. 'Mother went through hypno-training later than all the rest of us. Father was treated as a baby, as were all his children. My mother, however, did not undergo treatment until after they were married. Some vestige of normality remains in her.'

'I don't see how you tie together the hypno-keying and any lack of emotional response on your family's part.'

'It's easy,' she said, and smiled. The smile, as before, was not a smile at all. 'Each of us is driven by his particular talent, consumed by it despite the limit of his vision. It is not easy, therefore, to establish relationships with other people, to care deeply about them when your energies are concentrated in this one arena.'

'You forget that two other murders have taken place here. I would think all of you justified in reacting less forcefully to this one.'

'We reacted the same to the first,' Tina said. 'A bit of grief, a day or two of loss, then plunge back into the work at hand, create, form, build…' She looked at the paintings on the wall to her right, sighed audibly. ''What all of these hypno-keying experts seem not to understand is that you can't create classic art when you have no love life. If love of art is supreme, it's all masturbation. If life, people, places don't come first, there isn't anything for the talent to draw on, no stuffing for the sack.'

Though he was not, as she had subtly observed, a man of any great sensitivity — give him bright colors, bold lines, pleasing shapes, loud and lively music any day; to hell with the proper, genteel criteria — he saw in her a deep and awful suffering that, even with the aid of her explanations, he could not clearly grasp. He supposed that, as the attainment of perfect understanding in her art would always elude her, an understanding of her pain would elude him. He had a feeling that she did not sleep well at night, any night but especially this night — and that she tore up more paintings than she kept. He said nothing, for he had nothing to say that would make her feel any better — or any differently, for that matter.

In a quieter voice, almost a whisper, she said, 'How can I ever make anything lasting, get anything genuine down on paper or canvas, when I haven't any ability to care for people, for anyone?'

'You could care,' he said.

'No.'

'Look, you've spent most all your life among other hypno-keyed artists. But if you were living among other people, normal people, they would react strongly to you, form attachments to you and force you to react as strongly as they did. You could care.'

'You really think so?'

'Yes.'

Be careful.

Go to hell.

'I doubt it,' she said.

The confusion of the real and the subvocal conversations forced him to say, 'Doubt what?'

She looked at him curiously and said, 'I doubt that I could care for anyone.'

'You could,' he repeated stupidly.

For a long, awkward moment, they stood facing each other. He did not know how she felt, but he seemed suddenly transformed into a blundering, heavy-handed, club-footed wonder. He could hear himself breathing, and he swore he was as loud as an air-conditioning intake fan. He waited for her to say something, for he was unable to initiate anything more on his own. Then, finally aware that she felt she had already said too much and that she wanted to be alone, he said, 'Keep the pistol near you at all times.'

'I will.'

He said goodnight and left her there.

The elevator ride to the fifth level seemed to take forever.

In his room, he poured himself a healthy glassful of Scotch over a single ice cube — one cube so that there was more room in the tumbler for the liquor.

Liquor will dull your perceptions.

Go to hell.

He knew that he was finished for the day, that he could not go anywhere or do anything without a few hours sleep. He sat down in a chair near the patio doors and quickly worked toward the bottom of his golden drink.

In the last six hours the input of data had greatly increased. So many bits and pieces had been stored, now, that he knew the symbiote that was half him would soon begin to connect one datum with another. If the pace kept on like this, he would be able to slowly formulate a few theories in another day, maybe two days, then logically eliminate a number of the present suspects.

Then, perhaps, before too much longer, the case would be finished.

He realized as he swallowed the last of the Scotch that he did not want it to be finished.

That is an unhealthy attitude.

He wanted to apprehend the killer, of course, and before anyone else died. He wanted to pinpoint the man, get him running, corner him and break him down, thoroughly break him down. That was what he was all about, after all; that was what Baker St. Cyr did well. But once the killer was out of the way, he did not want to have to leave this house.

Get right down to it, then: He did not want to have to leave Tina Alderban.

Avoid emotional complications of this nature.

He got up and poured another glass of Scotch.

He sat down in the same chair and took a large swallow of the drink, stirred the ice with his finger.

Tina Alderban…

When he closed his eyes, he could see her on the insides of his lids, standing naked, wearing a cape of black hair, holding out her arms to him, with two shiny globes of light before her, one resting lightly on each of her flat palms…

He remembered the nightmare again: the cracked macadam roadway, the tumble-down buildings… Somehow, Tina Alderban seemed to be a part of it.

It is very late. Even if you sleep until noon, you will not get your proper rest.

To counter the stodgy half of his symbiote, he raised his glass and sipped more Scotch. Apparently, however, the bio-computer had gotten to him on a deep, motivational level, for he put the glass down when it was still half full, undressed and went to bed.

SIX: Nightmare and Paranoia

St. Cyr stepped quickly behind a huge slab of concrete pavement which some tremor of the earth had cracked, lifted, and jammed toward the dark sky. He pressed his back against it, making himself as small as he could, shivered as the dampness of the chilled stone seeped through his shirt.

He listened intently, but he could no longer hear the soft footsteps that had dogged him until this moment.

Stepping from behind the slab, he stared down the length of the avenue, saw that he was alone — unless, of course, someone was hiding behind one of the other tilted blocks of paving.

He did not have time to search them. He could only press forward. But when he did, the footsteps were behind him once more, close.

He ran.

As he increased his pace, the sky seemed to lower, the blackness sink until it lay just above his head, like a