The Werewolf Principle Read Online Free PDF Page A

to find what had happened to him and how it might have happened, and why, of course, as well. And to determine who or what he was, what he had been and what he might be now. It all was, he thought, a nightmare happening while he was wide awake.
    Although when morning came, it might be all right again, it might seem all right again. The sun would be shining then and the world be bright. He’d go out for a walk and talk with some of the neighbors up and down the street and it would be all right. Perhaps if he just forgot about it, brushed it from his mind—that, perhaps, would be the best way to handle it. It might not happen again and if it didn’t happen, there’d be no need to worry.
    He stirred uneasily in the chair.
    â€œWhat time is it?” he asked. “How long was I gone?”
    â€œIt is almost two o’clock,” said the House. “You went away at eight or very shortly after.”
    Six hours, he thought, and he could account for two of them at most. What had happened in those other four hours and why could he not recall them? For that matter, why could he not recall the time when he had been in space and the time before he was in space? Why must his life start with that moment he had opened his eyes in a hospital bed in Washington? There had been another time, there had been other years. He once had held a name and history—and what had happened to blot it all away?
    The rabbit finished its munching of the clover and went hopping off. The bird sat on the limb, no longer singing. A squirrel ran head-first down a tree trunk, halted two feet above the ground, spun like a flash and scurried up again. It reached a limb and ran out on it for a ways, then halted, poised, its tail jerking in excitement.
    Like sitting in a window, Blake thought, gazing out at the woodland scene—for there was no flatness to it. It had depth and perspective and the color of the landscape was no painted color, but the color one would know if he had looked upon an actual scene.
    The House still puzzled and disturbed him, at times made him uncomfortable. There was nothing in his background memory that had prepared him for anything like this. Although he could recall, in that misty time before complete forgetfulness closed down, that someone (whose name he could not recall) had cracked the enigma of gravity and that functioning solar power had been commonplace.
    But while the house was energized by its solar power plant and was mobile by virtue of its anti-gravity apparatus, it was much more than that. It was a robot—a robot with a good-servant complex built into it, and at times, it seemed, almost a mother complex. It took care of the people that it housed. It had their welfare firmly fixed in its computer-mind. It talked with them and served them, it reminded them and bullied them and nagged at them and coddled them. It was house and servant and companion all rolled into one. A man, Blake told himself, in time could come to look upon his house as a loyal and loving friend.
    The House did everything for you. It fed you and did the washing, it tucked you into bed, and given half a chance, it would wipe your nose. It watched over you and anticipated every single wish and sometimes was objectionable in its wish to do too much. It dreamed up things that it imagined you might like—like animated wallpaper (oops, not wallpaper!) with the rabbit and the singing bird.
    But, Blake told himself, it took some getting used to. Maybe not for someone who had lived his life with it. But come back from the stars, God knows from where or when, and be thrown into a house like this—then it took some getting used to.
    â€œCome and get it!” bawled the Kitchen. “Ham and eggs are ready!”

6
    It came alive humped in a place it had never sensed before—a strange enclosure inhabited by artifacts made mostly out of wood, although there was some metal and some fabric.
    It reacted instantly. It