The Ultimate Werewolf (22 page)

"Plasma physics? What are plasma physics?"

"Using electromagnetic fields to manipulate ionized gasses. You
must
have plasma physics."

"No, but I'm sure you can give us some valuable hints. Already we have fusion bombs. And so do the Europeans . . . but we can discuss that later." Wrocky stood up. His black nails made pressure points on Svetz's arm. "Think it over, Svetz. Oh, and make yourself free of the house, but don't go outside without an escort. The trolls, you know."

▼▼▼

Svetz left the room with his head whirling. The wolves would not let him leave.

"Svetz, I'm glad you're staying," Wrona chattered. "I like you. I'm sure you'll like it here. Please let me show you over the house."

Down the length of the hallway, one frosted globe burned dimly in the gloom, like a full moon transported indoors. Nocturnal, they were nocturnal.

Wolves.

"I'm a xenophobe," he said. "I can't help it. I was born that way."

"Oh, you'll learn to like us. You like me a little already, don't you, Svetz?" She reached up to scratch him behind the ear. A thrill of pleasure ran through him, unexpectedly sharp, so that he half closed his eyes.

"This way," she said.

"Where are we going?"

"I thought I'd show you some trolls. Svetz, are you really descended from trolls? I can't believe it!"

"I'll tell you when I see them," said Svetz. He remembered the
Homo habilis
in the Vivarium. It had been a man, an Advisor, until the Secretary-General had ordered him regressed.

They went through the dining room, and Svetz saw unmistakable bones on the plates. He shivered. His forebears had eaten meat; the trolls were brute animals here, whatever they might be in Svetz's world —but Svetz shuddered. His thinking seemed turgid, his head felt thick. He had to get out of here.

"If you think Uncle Wrocky's tough, you should meet the European ambassador," said Wrona. "Perhaps you will."

"Does he come here?"

"Sometimes." Wrona growled low in her throat. "I don't like him. He's a different species, Svetz. Here it was the wolves that evolved into men; at least that's what our teacher tells us. In Europe it was something else."

"I don't think Uncle Wrocky will let me meet him. Or even tell him about me." Svetz rubbed at his eyes.

"You're lucky. Herr Dracula smiles a lot and says nasty things in a polite voice. It takes you a minute to—Svetz! What's wrong?"

Svetz groaned like a man in agony. "My eyes!" He felt higher. "My forehead! I don't have a forehead anymore."

"I don't understand."

Svetz felt his face with his fingertips. His eyebrows were a caterpillar of hair on a thick, solid ridge of bone. From the brow ridge his forehead sloped back at forty-five degrees. And his chin, his chin was gone, too. There was only a regular curve of jaw into neck.

"I'm regressing. I'm turning into a troll," said Svetz. "Wrona, if I turn into a troll, will they eat me?"

"I don't know. I'll stop them, Svetz!"

"No. Take me down to the extension cage. If you're not with me, the trolls will kill me."

"All right. But, Svetz, what about the monster?"

"He should be easier to handle by now. It'll be all right. Just take me there. Please."

"All right, Svetz." She took his hand and led him.

The mirror hadn't lied. He'd been changing, even then, adapting to this line of history. First his lungs had lost their adaption to normal air.

There had been no industrial age here. But there had been no
Homo
sapiens
either. . . .

Wrona opened the door. Svetz sniffed at the night. His sense of smell had become preternaturally acute. He smelled the trolls before he saw them, coming uphill toward him across the living green carpet. Svetz's fingers curled, wishing for a weapon.

Three of them. They formed a ring around Svetz and Wrona. One of them carried a length of white bone. They all walked upright on two legs, but they walked as if their feet hurt them. They were as hairless as men. Apes' heads mounted on men's bodies.

Homo habilis
, the killer plains apes. Man's ancestor.

"Pay them no attention," Wrona said offhandedly. "They won't hurt us." She started down the hill. Svetz followed closely.

"He really shouldn't have that bone," she called back. "We try to keep bones away from them. They use them as weapons. Sometimes they hurt each other. Once one of them got hold of the iron handle for the lawn sprinkler and killed a gardener with it."

"I'm not going to take it away from him."

"That glaring light, is that your extension cage?"

"Yes."

"I'm not sure about this, Svetz." She stopped suddenly. "Uncle Wrocky's right. You'll only get more lost. Here you'll at least be taken care of."

"No. Uncle Wrocky was wrong. See the dark side of the extension cage, how it fades away into nothing. It's still attached to the rest of the time machine. It'll just reel me in."

"Oh."

"No telling how long it's been veering across the time lines. Maybe ever since that futzy horse poked his futzy horn through the controls. Nobody ever noticed before. Why should they? Nobody ever stopped a time machine halfway before."

"Svetz, horses don't have horns."

"Mine does."

There was a noise behind them. Wrona looked back into a darkness Svetz's eyes could not pierce. "Somebody must have noticed us! Come on, Svetz!"

She pulled him toward the lighted cage. They stopped just outside.

"My head feels thick," Svetz mumbled. "My tongue too."

"What are we going to do about the monster? I can't hear anything—"

No monster. Just a man with amnesia, now. He was only dangerous in the transition stage."

She looked in. "Why, you're right! Sir, would you mind—Svetz, he doesn't seem to understand me."

"Sure not. Why should he? He thinks he's a white arctic wolf." Svetz stepped inside. The white-haired wolf man was backed into a corner, warily watching. He looked a lot like Wrona.

Svetz became aware that he had picked up a tree branch. His hand must have done it without telling his brain. He circled, holding the weapon ready. An unreasoning rage built up and up in him. Invader! The man had no business here in Svetz's territory.

The wolf man backed away, his slant eyes mad and frightened. Suddenly he was out the door and running, the trolls close behind.

"Your father can teach him, maybe," said Svetz.

Wrona was studying the controls. "How do you work it?"

"Let me see. I'm not sure I remember." Svetz rubbed at his drastically sloping forehead. "That one closes the door—"

Wrona pushed it. The door closed.

"Shouldn't you be outside?"

"I want to come with you," said Wrona.

"Oh." It was getting terribly difficult to think. Svetz looked over the control panel. Eeeny, meeny—that one? Svetz pulled it.

Free fall. Wrona yipped. Gravity came, vectored radially outward from the center of the extension cage. It pulled against the walls.

"When my lungs go back to normal, I'll probably go to sleep," said Svetz. "Don't worry about it." Was there something else he ought to tell Wrona? He tried to remember.

Oh, yes. "You can't go home again," said Svetz. "We'd never find this line of history again."

"I want to stay with you," said Wrona.

"All right."

▼▼▼

Within a deep recess in the bulk of the time machine, a fog formed. It congealed abruptly—and Svetz's extension cage was back, hours late. The door popped open automatically. But Svetz didn't come out.

They had to pull him out by the shoulders, out of air that smelled of beast and honeysuckle.

"He'll be all right in a minute. Get a filter over that other thing," Ra Chen ordered. He stood over Svetz with his arms folded, waiting.

Svetz began breathing.

He opened his eyes.

"All right," said Ra Chen. "What happened?"

Svetz sat up. "Let me think. I went back to preindustrial America. It was all snowed in. I . . . shot a wolf."

"We've got it in a tent. Then what?"

"No. The wolf left. We chased him out." Svetz's eyes went wide. "Wrona!"

Wrona lay on her side in the filter tent. Her fur was thick and rich, white with black markings. She was built something like a wolf, but more compactly, with a big head and a short muzzle and a tightly curled tail. Her eyes were closed. She did not seem to be breathing.

Svetz knelt. "Help me get her out of there! Can't you tell the difference between a wolf and a dog?"

Pat Murphy

▼▼▼

REYNAL passed Jem the bottle and he took a long drink. The warmth of the whiskey chased away the chill of the September evening. The two men leaned against the split-rail fence of the corral, just beyond the circle of torchlight where the fiddler played and the farmers danced on the hard-packed dirt of the street.

"There's a pretty one," Reynal said, watching a young woman whirl past in the arms of a young man. Her blonde hair was twisted into curls and she wore a blue satin ribbon around her neck. Her face shone in the torchlight, paler than any man in the town. "Ah, she's a beauty." As she passed, Jem caught a whiff of cloves and cinnamon, spices the I women used in lieu of perfume.

Jem did not understand these white women. Over the scratching of the fiddle, Jem heard feminine laughter—the giggles of young women who had traveled with their families to farm this new land—and he froze, fearing this unfamiliar territory as another man might fear the
¹
rapids of the Columbia. Jem took another swig of whiskey and returned ii the bottle to Reynal.

Jem's father had been a trapper at Fort Vancouver. His mother had been Cayuse—a princess of her tribe, to hear his father tell it. But his father had been a liar, and Jem hadn't put much stock in what he said. His mother had died of measles when he was five, and Jem had grown up wild, eating at the trappers' table at Fort Vancouver and cared for by the trappers' squaws.

Jem's father had died in 1848—he caught an arrow between the shoulder blades in one of many skirmishes with the Cayuse. Jem was sorry for it—his father had always treated him well—but Jem was a man by then, seventeen years old and ready to live his own life. He spent a few years trapping beaver and selling the pelts to Hudson's Bay Company as his father had before him.

In 1851, Jem decided to settle. He built a cabin in a pretty valley three days south of Oregon City. He had a few head of cattle and the game was plentiful enough. He had come to town for a taste of human company and lingered for the dance. But after a day of the company of Reynal and the other trappers, he was ready to escape to the solitude of his cabin.

"Look there," Reynal said, lifting the hand that held the bottle to point unsteadily. "There she is. I heard about her."

Jem glanced in the direction that Reynal was pointing. On the other side of the corral, a slim young man in a broad-brimmed hat leaned against the railing. "What do you mean?"

Reynal leaned close to speak in a drunken whisper. "That's a woman. She dresses like a man." Reynal shook his head, scandalized. His eyes were bloodshot and he stank of whiskey. "She came riding into town yesterday on an Indian pony and allowed as how she crossed the plains by herself."

Jem studied the woman. As he watched, she turned her head and he caught a glimpse of the face beneath the hat. By the torchlight, he could see that her face was dark from the sun. Her features were those of a young woman. But white women did not dress in men's clothing. White women did not travel alone in the wilderness. As he watched, she turned away and the broad brim of her hat hid her face. She headed down the street toward Rudd's Hotel, where Mr. Rudd was selling whiskey.

"Think I'll go and get to know her a little better," Reynal said and started around the corral toward her. He walked unsteadily, reaching out now and again to lay a hand on the railing for support. Jem watched him sway as he left the railing, then steady himself, cast a sly look back over his shoulder, and follow the slim figure into the darkness.

Jem followed as far as the general store, where he sat on a wooden bench and waited. The street was dark, except for the faint light of the waxing moon. He heard the murmur of voices to his left—the lilt of French. A scuffle—boots scraping against hard-packed dirt, the clink

and slosh of a bottle falling. A yelp—Reynal by the sound—then Reynal cursing in French.

Reynal was limping when he came back. He clutched his right hand in his left and Jem could see blood welling between his fingers. "She bit me," he said in a tone of aggrieved astonishment.

Jem could not help grinning. Reynal glared at him and went past him, back to the dance.

A few minutes later, the woman emerged from the darkness. She carried Reynal's bottle in her hand. She stopped when she saw Jem. "You waiting for something?"

The moonlight shone on her face. Her chin was too strong and her mouth was too wide to be called pretty. He guessed she was about eighteen.

"Just wanted to see what kind of wild critter mauled Reynal," Jem said.

She gave him a thin-lipped smile. "You've seen."

He nodded. "Hope you washed your mouth out. He's a poisonous cuss."

She did not move. "You a friend of his?"

Jem shrugged. "I wouldn't trust him as far as you could toss him, so I wouldn't really count him as a friend." He sat and watched her for a moment. The women at the dance spoke a language he did not understand—something higher and sweeter and more lilting than man talk. Jem looked at them and had no words to say. But this woman was not like them. "You could sit if you liked. I won't give you any call to bite me."

She sat on the edge of the porch, an arm's length away. He liked the way she moved: quick and graceful and a little nervous, like a high- strung horse.

"Where you headed from here?" he asked.

"South," she said.

"Homesteading?"

"Maybe."

He stretched out his legs and looked up at the stars. "People say I don't talk much. You've got me beat."

She said nothing.

"Smoke?" he asked, offering her his tobacco pouch.

She shook her head.

"I suppose traveling alone you got out of the habit of talking. And you might not have been in the habit to start with." When he glanced at her, she looked away. "My guess is you don't like people much. I can

understand that. I don't like them most of the time myself. But every now and then, I get lonely. It's lonely out where I live. Pretty little valley, but it's lonely." He glanced at her again, and this time she met his eyes. He was talking to her the way he would talk to a spooked horse, soothing her, calming her, not paying much attention to what he was saying. "Seems like it must have been lonely, crossing the prairies by yourself. Worrying about the Indians and listening to the wolves howl."

"I like the Indians fine," she said at last. "And the wolves aren't a problem."

He stopped for a moment, startled that she had spoken at last. "Well, then," he said slowly, "you might like it where I live. There's a pack of wolves at the end of the valley. When the moon's up, they sing to me like a church choir on Sunday."

"You don't look like a farmer. The farmers on the trail are dull people. Like their oxen."

"Was a trapper. Gave it up. Settled down last spring. Seemed like time. I'd like to raise a family, but most of these women, they're looking for someone refined. They seem like a soft lot." He hesitated. The distant fiddle fell silent. "I'm looking for a woman with teeth."

She laughed, an unexpected musical sound. "With teeth?" She stood up. "You may find more than you bargained for."

She started for the door of the hotel. "Wait," he said. "What's your name? I'm Jem Lowell."

"Nadya," she said, showing her teeth in a sudden smile. "The Pawnee call me Crazy Wolf." She headed down the street, returning to the dance and leaving Jem to look at the stars alone.

▼▼▼

At Rudd's Hotel, for the extravagant price of a dollar a night, a traveler could rent a hard wooden cot and a straw-tick mattress, separated from the neighboring bed by a muslin curtain. A few bugs came free with the room, but the cold drove most of them out.

That night, Jem stayed in the hotel, rather than returning to the fort. He lay awake on his straw-tick mattress, listening to the grunts and snores of the man in the next cubicle.

Before the sun came up, when mist was rising from the river, he left the hotel and gathered a bouquet of the bright wildfiowers that grew on the riverbank. He had heard that women liked flowers. It seemed as good a place as any to begin.

He felt like a fool, walking through the streets of town with the flowers clutched in his hand. He found her in the stable, tending to her pony. She was dressed as she had been the night before: a red flannel shirt, men's denim trousers, a broad-brimmed black hat, dusty and faded.

She was examining the pony's left hind hoof when he walked in, and for a moment, in the early morning light, she looked beautiful. He stopped in the doorway. She looked up, and the light on her face shifted. An ordinary face, nothing more. He thrust the flowers into her hands. "These are for you."

She took them, her dark eyebrows drawing together in puzzlement. The hand that held the flowers was grimy with dust from the pony's hoof, and her fingernails were broken.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and wondered what to do next. The pony turned her head to sniff at the flowers and Nadya moved them out of the animal's reach, still frowning.

"Problem with her feet?" he asked.

"She was limping yesterday. Stone bruise, I suspect," Nadya said. "Needs a rest."

"I've a liniment for that," he said. He fetched it. She set the flowers down on the stable floor, and anointed the bruise. He stood back. He did not know what to do with his hands, so he shoved them back in his pockets. She finished the job and wiped her hands on a bandanna. She glanced down at the flowers and then picked them up and held them gingerly.

"Come for a walk?" Jem suggested awkwardly.

She studied him over the scraggling bouquet. "Walk where?"

"By the river."

"All right, then," she said.

They walked down Oregon City's main street, past Rudd's Hotel. Two town women, dressed in full-length calico skirts and proper bonnets, were walking down the street toward them. Half a block away, the two women crossed to the far side of the street. Jem heard Nadya mutter something under her breath in French. He caught the phrase "mangeurs de lard," pork-eaters, a mountaineer's term for the soft- living people of the settlements.

"Don't take it personal," Jem said. "Likely as not, it has nothing to do with you."

"Why's that?"

"They do the same for me." He stopped and turned. The women were still in sight. They had crossed back. "Watch." He took a breath and whooped—a wild screeching war cry. The women jumped and clutched each other's arms. They glanced back at Jem, then doubled their pace, hurrying into a shop.

Nadya was laughing. She slapped the bouquet against her leg, scattering bright petals on the dirt track.

"They're just protecting their scalps." Jem said. "I'm half Cayuse. Never know when I might go crazy and cut loose."

Nadya looked up at him and grinned for the first time. They walked along a path that led by the river. He was aware of her walking beside him, still carrying the bouquet. She let it swing easily now, slapping it against her leg and scattering petals.

"Too crowded around here," he said at last. "Too many new settlers."

She nodded agreement.

"My cabin is three days ride south. Over the Calapooeys, not far from the Umpqua River. No towns there. Forest grows right up to my doorstep."

"When you were a trapper, what did you trap?" When he looked at her, she was watching his face.

He shrugged, puzzled by the sudden turn the conversation had taken. "Beaver, mostly. That was the best money."

"Other things, sometimes?"

"Sometimes. Bobcat, now and then. A badger or two."

They walked in silence for a while. When they came to a muddy place in the trail, he held out his hand to help her across. She stepped across without his help, then took his hand. They walked hand in hand.

"Deer ahead," she said softly, stopping in the trail. Three white- tailed deer lifted their heads and bounded away into the trees.

"Good eyes," he said.

"My father was a good hunter. I take after him."

The deer moved on, but Jem remained still in the trail, holding her hand tightly. She was not a big woman. A head shorter than he was, she had to tip her head back to look at him.