A Werewolf Among Us

'The same thing that I traipse from world to world in search of every year of my life — adventure, danger, excitement.'

'And the artist has none of that?'

'Only secondhand.'

'If you have so little in common with the family, why do you return every other year to visit?'

'They're my only relatives,' Hirschel said. 'A man needs a family now and again.'

St. Cyr nodded. 'How old are you?'

'Sixty.'

'Six years older than Jubal.' When Hirschel nodded, the cyberdetective asked, 'Are you wealthy?'

The big man evidenced no dissatisfaction with St. Cyr's prying. 'Quite wealthy,' he said. 'Though I'm not as wealthy as Jubal, by even a fraction.' He smiled the wolfs smile again and said, 'That still makes me suspect, doesn't it? Perhaps even more than before.'

'Are you mentioned in Jubal's will?'

'Yes,' Hirschel said, still smiling. 'I receive the least of all those included — unless, of course, I'm the only survivor.'

St. Cyr looked at the wolf. For a moment he felt that its glass eyes had shifted their dead gaze, stared directly at him. He blinked, and the eyes were where they should be, fixed on the air, cold, dry.

'I guess that will be all for tonight,' he said, standing.

Hirschel did not rise to see him to the door, but the panel slid open as he took a few steps toward it.

At the door St. Cyr turned and looked at the wolf, looked at Hirschel, said, 'The wolfs head there…'

'What of it?'

'It's one of those now extinct?'

'Yes.'

'And is that how the du-aga-klava is supposed to appear in its animal shape?'

Hirschel turned in his chair and examined the long-snouted, wickedly-toothed beast. 'Pretty much that way, I suppose, though a deal larger and far more ugly.'

St. Cyr cleared his throat and said, 'Why did Climicon label the wolf for extinction?'

'It was a predator, a very dangerous animal,' Hirschel said 'It was not at all the sort of thing you'd want running loose in the woods on a rich man's paradise.'

'Then why let the boars live?'

Hirschel clearly had not considered that conflict before. He looked surprised, turned to examine the wolf again, frowned. 'You've got a good point there, for a boar can be twice as deadly and mean-tempered as any wolf.'

'No ideas?'

Hirschel shook his head; his black hair bounced, fell back into place. 'You'll have to ask Climicon about that, but they surely had their reasons.'

'I'll find out in the morning,' St. Cyr said.

'Let me know what you learn.'

'I will. Good night.'

St. Cyr stepped out of the room, oriented himself by the paintings on the walls and walked the length of the long corridor to his own suite.

In his bedroom, stretched out full length on the enormous waterbed, he said, 'I've still got nothing concrete to go on, no base to build the case from.'

A few things.

'Nothing.'

Bits and pieces.

'Like Hirschel's curious resemblance to the wolf when he smiles?'

Immaterial.

FOUR: An Ugly Incident

'Visitor, Mr. St. Cyr,' the house computer said.

The cyberdetective sat up, swung to the edge of the shifting bed and stood. 'Who is it?'

'Mr. Dane Alderban,' the house told him.

'Just a minute.'

'Holding, sir.'

St, Cyr took off his suit jacket and draped it over a chair, put the largest of his unopened suitcases on the bed, opened it, quickly dumped out the contents, ran his fingers along the cloth lining and watched it curl back from the concealed pocket in the bottom. He removed a handgun and a chamois shoulder holster, amused as he always was that this one requirement of his profession had changed little in a thousand years. He buckled the holster on, put the gun in the smooth sleeve of it, slipped into his coat again.

'Still holding, sir.'

'On my way right now,' St. Cyr said, wondering what Dane Alderban had to say on the sly, away from the rest of the family. He stepped out of the bedroom, pulled the door shut, crossed the sitting room as he called for Dane's admittance.

The door slid up, and the young man entered the room fast, stopped beyond St. Cyr, and looked quickly around as if he expected to find someone else there.

'You'll have to excuse the delay,' St. Cyr said. 'I was dressing for bed when you called.'

Dane raised a long-fingered hand and impatiently waved away the suggestion of an apology. He sat down in the largest easy chair in the room, by the patio doors, barely able to contain the nervous energy that normally kept him on his feet, pacing, moving. He said, 'I've come here to make a suggestion that could put an early end to this whole affair — if you'll have the good grace to listen to me and to think about what I have to say.'

St. Cyr went to the bar, folded it open, looked at the contents and said, 'A drink?'

'No, thank you.'

St. Cyr poured Scotch, put the bottle back, popped two cubes into the glass and to hell with bruising the liquor, sat down in the chair that faced Dane's from the other end of the closed patio doors, putting a long swath of darkness on one side of them. 'My job is to listen to people, consider what they tell me — and put a swift end to the case.'

Dane sat on the edge of the chair, his elbows on his knees, his head bent down, looking up at St. Cyr over the ridge of his brow, just as he had done in the drawing room earlier. It almost seemed that he affected the position to conceal most of the expression on his face.

He said, 'St. Cyr, I am thoroughly convinced that the native legends are the only answer to the murders.'

'The du-aga-klava, a werewolf among us?'

'Yes.'

St. Cyr did not reply.

'That thing you wear, the other half of you…'

'The bio-computer?'

'Yes. It rejects the notion of werewolves, doesn't it, discards the consideration right off?'

St. Cyr took a sip of Scotch, found it smooth and hot, a good brand. 'It doesn't, strictly speaking, discard any probability. It assigns degrees of possibility to every theory that comes up, that's all.'

'To werewolves — a very low degree of possibility.'

'Most likely.'

Dane drew even more to the edge of his chair, increased the odd angle from which he carried on the conversation. 'So low a degree, in fact, that it doesn't give serious consideration to the idea at all.'

'It doesn't reason in absolutes,' St. Cyr corrected, 'neither negative nor positive absolutes.'

Suddenly the young man sighed and slid back in the easy chair, as if someone had tapped his skull and