“I saw it, Citizen! There were men in it. One of them is here again! He came looking for me with another man and I barely escaped him. I’m afraid!”
“There is no cause for fear, only an opportunity to appreciate,” Citizen Germyn said mechanically—it was what one told one’s children.
But within himself, he was finding it very hard to remain calm. That word Wolf—it was a destroyer of calm, an incitement to panic and hatred! He remembered Tropile well, and there was Wolf, to be sure. The mere fact that Citizen Germyn had doubted his Wolfishness at first was powerful cause to be doubly convinced of it now; he had postponed the day of reckoning for an enemy of all the world, and there was enough secret guilt in his recollection to set his own heart thumping.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” said Citizen Germyn, in words that the stress of emotion had already made far less than graceful.
Obediently, Gala Tropile said: “I was returning to my home after the evening meal and Citizeness Puffin—she took me in after Citizen Tropile—after my husband was—”
“I understand. You made your home with her.”
“Yes. She told me that two men had come to see me. They spoke badly, she said, and I was alarmed. I peered through a window of my home and they were there. One had been in the aircraft I saw! And they flew away with my husband.”
“It is a matter of seriousness,” Citizen Germyn admitted doubtfully. “So then you came here to me?”
“Yes, but they saw me, Citizen! And I think they followed. You must protect me—I have no one else!”
“If they be Wolf,” Germyn said calmly, “we will raise hue and cry against them. Now will the Citizeness remain here? I go forth to see these men.”
There was a graceless hammering on the door.
“Too late!” cried Gala Tropile in panic. “They are here!”
Citizen Germyn went through the ritual of greeting, of deprecating the ugliness and poverty of his home, of offering everything he owned to his visitors; it was the way to greet a stranger.
The two men lacked both courtesy and wit, but they did make an attempt to comply with the minimal formal customs of introduction. He had to give them credit for that; and yet it was almost more alarming than if they had blustered and yelled.
For he knew one of these men.
He dredged the name out of his memory. It was Haendl. The same man had appeared in Wheeling the day Glenn Tropile had been scheduled to make the Donation of the Spinal Tap—and had broken free and escaped. He had inquired about Tropile of a good many people, Citizen Germyn included, and even at that time, in the excitement of an Amok, a Wolf-finding and a Translation in a single day, Germyn had wondered at Haendl’s lack of breeding and airs.
Now he wondered no longer.
But the man made no overt act and Citizen Germyn postponed the raising of the hue and cry. It was not a thing to be done lightly.
“Gala Tropile is in this house,” the man with Haendl said bluntly.
Citizen Germyn managed a Quirked Smile.
“We want to see her, Germyn. It’s about her husband. He—uh—he was with us for a while and something happened.”
“Ah, yes. The Wolf.”
The man flushed and looked at Haendl. Haendl said loudly: “The Wolf. Sure he’s a Wolf. But he’s gone now, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
“Gone?”
“Not just him, but four or five of us. There was a man named Innison and he’s gone, too. We need help, Germyn. Something about Tropile—God knows how it is, but he started something. We want to talk to his wife and find out what we can about him. So will you get her out of the back room where she’s hiding and bring her here, please?”
Citizen Germyn quivered. He bent over the I.D. bracelet that once had belonged to the one P.F.C. Joe Hartman, fingering it to hide his thoughts.
He said at last: “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps the Citizeness is with my wife. If this be so, would it not be possible that she is fearful of those who once were with her husband?”
Haendl laughed sourly. “She isn’t any more fearful than we are, Germyn. I told you about this man Innison who disappeared. He was a Son of the Wolf, you understand me? For that matter—” He glanced at his companion, licked his lips and changed his mind about what he had been going to say next. “He was a Wolf. Do you ever remember hearing of a Wolf being Translated before?”
“Translated?” Germyn dropped the I.D. bracelet. “But that’s impossible!” he cried, forgetting his manners completely. “Oh, no! Translation comes only to those who attain the moment of supreme detachment, you can be sure of that. I know! I’ve seen it with my own eyes. No Wolf could possibly—”
“At least five Wolves did,” Haendl said grimly. “Now you see what the trouble is? Tropile was Translated—I saw that with my own eyes. The next day, Innison. Within a week, two or three others. So we came down here, Germyn, not because we like you people, not because we enjoy it, but because we’re scared.
“What we want is to talk to Tropile’s wife—you, too, I guess; we want to talk to anybody who ever knew him. We want to find out everything there is to find out about Tropile and see if we can make any sense of the answers. Because maybe Translation is the supreme objective of life to you people, Germyn, but to us it’s just one more way of dying. And we don’t want to die.”
Citizen Germyn bent to pick up his cherished identification bracelet and dropped it absently on a table. There was very much on his mind.
He said at last: “That is strange. Shall I tell you another strange thing?”
Haendl, looking angry and baffled, nodded.
Germyn said: “There has been no Translation here since the day the Wolf, Tropile, escaped. But
