A Werewolf Among Us

'Can't at all.'

She said, 'Then there are alternatives to the bio-computer.'

He looked at her, thinking that it was best to face each other honestly right now, looked quickly away when he saw what he thought were tears in the corners of her eyes. He wished that Teddy would arrive soon, so that he would have something to shoot at. He wanted to see the pulse of the laser and watch the destruction the sound made as the light carried it against and into the robot's shell. He felt that the gun could bleed away a nameless tension that had overtaken him.

He said, 'The alternatives are worse, because they involve too much responsibility.'

'There must be something pretty awful behind your nightmare,' she said, 'to make you the way you are now.'

'How am I now?'

'Cold, distant.'

'Look who's talking,' he said.

He regretted the insult as soon as he had spoken, but he did not have the will to retract it, even if it could be reeled back in and altogether forgotten.

She was hurt, but she tried not to show the hurt.

'You're right, of course. I'm the one who told you that in the first place. I feel cold, hollow, uncaring. But you were the one who was supposed to help me, to make me feel human, to warm me up. Do you think you ever can — so long as you're wearing that shell?' She answered her own question. 'No, it just won't work. We'd have to be each other's crutch, or not at all.'

As St. Cyr was framing his response, Teddy appeared in the library doorway and took a burst from Hirschel's vibra-rifle, square in the center of his body trunk.

SEVENTEEN: More Than a Case Is Ended

'You got him!' Dane shouted.

St. Cyr snapped, 'Stay down!'

The boy dropped back behind a shelter made from a lounge chair and about a hundred hardbound volumes of popular Darmanian history which he had pulled from the shelves.

'I hit him square in the chest,' Hirschel said. 'But if the damage had been serious, he'd be lying there in the doorway. Do you see him?'

'No,' Dane said sheepishly.

Tina was on her knees again, and she leaned close to St. Cyr to whisper, 'May I stay here with you? I think this is a better firing position than the one I was in.'

That was not the reason she wished to remain beside him, however. But he could not find heart to argue with her. 'Stay,' he said.

In the next instant Teddy shot through the doorway without warning, moving far faster than St. Cyr had ever imagined that he could. He had angled his body trunk ninety degrees from his gravplate mobility system, which was fitted under his base on a heavy ball joint. The result was that he came at them lying on his side, offering the smallest possible target. Even if they could snap a shot straight into his undercarriage, there were no mechanisms to be damaged, only the heavy ball joint that moved the gravplates, and this was too solid to succumb to a vibra- beam.

St. Cyr fired, missed.

'Look out!' Tina cried.

Teddy struck the writing desk behind which they were hiding, smashed through the top of it 'feet first,' showering splintered wood into the air, crumpling the piece of furniture like eggshell. His advance did not seem at all diminished by the collision. He struck St, Cyr's bad shoulder with nearly enough force to rip the detective's arm from its socket, then rocketed past, deeper into the library.

Hirschel fired, must have missed, and cursed.

Small hands pulled pieces of the desk from St. Cyr and brushed splinters from his face. 'You all right?' Tina asked.

He blinked, nodded, and tried to sit up.

Across the room, Teddy soared to the high ceiling like a bat loose in a house, dropped behind Dane, leveled off and slammed hard into the boy as he turned to take aim with his pistol. Dane was tossed into the bookshelves as if he were made of clay; he got out one choked scream before he fell forward on his face. He might or might not be dead. Clearly, though, he was out of the fight for good.

'My rifle,' St. Cyr said.

Tina said, 'It's smashed.'

'Where's your pistol?'

She looked around, came up with it.

'Give it to me.'

Hirschel scored a hit, fell and twisted away as the robot dived in towards him.

St. Cyr fired three times in rapid succession as the master unit, though still lying on its side, parallel to the floor, passed length-on to him, offering an excellent target. All three of the shots, the pulses of light showed, were wide of the mark.

'Terrible shooting,' she said.

'My shoulder hurts like a bitch,' he said. That much was perfectly true. But the excuse for such inexcusably bad marksmanship on the part of a professional rang hollow even in his own ear; he had pulled off those three bursts of fire knowing they were wide.

Teddy swung back on Hirschel just as the hunter gained his feet, struck his left hip and spun him violently around. Hirschel's knees caught on the arm of a chair and he went down hard, his head striking the back of the chair with a sickening dull thud. He did not move.

Teddy swung in St. Cyr's direction, located him and started forward at top speed.

St. Cyr shot, missed, shot again, fell to the side as the robot careened past.

'Give me the gun,' Tina said, holding out a slim, brown hand.

St. Cyr pushed her rudely away as Teddy streaked back on them and passed within an inch of the spot where her head had been. He rolled, despite his throbbing shoulder, and fired again. The pulse of light, tattling on his bad shooting, passed two feet above the master unit.

What in hell was wrong?

For once, the bio-computer had no suggestion.

Foolishly, Jubal had picked up a chair and was crossing the room in quick, heavy steps, brandishing the impossible weapon as if he could frighten the robot away with the threat of a severe beating.

'Get back. Stay down!' St. Cyr called.

Jubal could not hear him, or did not want to. Perhaps, in this useless display of bravery, he hoped to cancel out everything that St. Cyr had said to him in the last several hours; wipe out his wife's and his daughter's agreement with that judgment; prove that, after all, he could care about someone besides himself, something else besides his art.

Teddy rose, dived, leveled out and smashed the chair from the old man's hands, sending him tumbling backwards. He landed in a heap at his wife's feet. Alicia bent over him and patted his face. She seemed almost too calm as she pointedly ignored the chaos around her — and when it was all over, if she were somehow still alive, she would most likely have some screaming to do.

'Give me that gun!' Tina insisted.

'Stay down,' St. Cyr said. 'Or get out of here.' He ignored her reaching hand and got clumsily to his feet. He did not dare look at his shoulder. The pain was bad enough. He did not want to have to match the pain with the sight of all that blood from the opened wound. Somehow he twisted fast enough to avoid Teddy's next pass, turned and stumbled into the rows of ceiling-high bookshelves that paralleled the rear wall of the room and took up a third of the chamber's space. He leaned against a shelf of mystery novels and tried to regain his breath and at least