The Ultimate Werewolf (35 page)

He had no speech to name it
humanity
, but he recognized it.

And turned away.

His back bristled and a snarl clattered in his throat.

They waited for him, a dozen or more men in white suits, each man holding a weapon. And Dr. Iglace, hands empty, at the head of them, knee-deep in the rising fog. Dimly and without human words Kazak remembered that Dr. Iglace and the others knew all about silver—

He hoped they had silver bullets.

He sprang.

▼▼▼

"It was simply another test," Dr. Iglace explained. "We had to make sure that you could resist killing before we set you free."

"Free?" Kazak asked. It was morning; he had a vague memory of the force-weapons, of the energy that seized him, slowed him, kept his jaws from Dr. Iglace's throat. They had kept him paralyzed this time until he was human again, and they had pumped his veins full of nutrients. He felt weak this morning, but not destroyed. Dr. Iglace was absorbed in reading a series of figures from a display that had appeared on the room's wall and did not respond to Kazak's question, and so he repeated it: "You're setting me free?"

Iglace stirred as though coming out of a daydream. "Yes. You were well guarded the whole time. You couldn't have hurt anyone. Though if you had fallen from the skypath even your remarkable recuperative powers might not have sufficed. We anticipated that you would use the elevators at the end of the corridor."

Kazak shook his head. "I didn't see them."

"You didn't reach them. No matter. We regrouped at once."

"You planned for me to escape."

"Of course. It was a test, as I said. To see if you would kill, or attempt to kill, a human being. You did not. I except myself." The blue eyes were cold, the smile frosty. "You scarcely regard me as human. But now we know, don't we? And so you may go free."

"Back—to the forest?"

Dr. Iglace tutted. "Dear me, no, of course not. We are a tame world, Mr. Kazak. We can scarcely allow a wolf in the fold. No, we're sending you to Venus."

Kazak blinked. "No."

"Yes. Venus is a frontier world, Mr. Kazak. Still very hot, to be sure —you'll be dropped off at the North Pole, where summer highs are only 38 degrees or so, hardly more than blood heat. The gravitational accelerators have sped the planet's rotation over the past centuries. A Venerian day is now only thirty hours. You may be the only colonist who will live long enough to see it reach twenty-four, in a hundred years."

"No," Kazak said again.

Dr. Iglace spread his hands. "Venus has rivers and lakes, admittedly small; vast oxygen-producing forests, though the trees are all bio-engineered from Earth stock; a population of, ah, individualists, happiest in a frontier setting. It's ideal for you. Who knows, there you may even hear—" the quick smile was not exactly mocking—"the song of the blood."

Kazak met the smile with a bitter laugh. "A place with none of the security of Earth? Where the men and women don't have these damned living houses to pamper and protect them? Where a wolf could kill without fear of restraint?"

"Exactly," said Dr. Iglace. "However, you will not kill. You proved that last night. Even in your wolf form you have enough control to refrain from killing."

"I can't be sure of that. If I grow desperate, or hungry enough—"

Dr. Iglace checked the time. "You must come with me. If we don't start, we'll miss the shuttle. Don't worry, Mr. Kazak. I think youTl like the hard work on Venus, the challenge of surviving on the frontier. Why, you can enjoy a normal life, even marry—"

Kazak snarled. "The condition is genetic."

"Oh, none of your family may ever return to Earth. We will see to that."

"Are you mad? A race of werewolves on an unprotected frontier world?"

"Am
I
mad? Are you? Rejecting freedom?" Dr. Iglace's frosty smile flickered again. "There is, of course, one other advantage, one that you should appreciate. It really tips the scales in your favor. Given your natural abilities, your stubbornness and intellect, your stamina—I wouldn't be surprised if this last advantage doesn't make you the most powerful colonist on Venus, in time."

"And what is that advantage?" Kazak asked.

"Venus," said the scientist "has no moon."

Stuart M. Kaminsky

▼▼▼

KATRINA Ivanova hurried along the snow-covered Taras Schevchenko Embankment by the Moscow River. She had just finished her shift as an elevator operator in the Ukraina Hotel and when she checked the clock inside the workers' entrance, she saw that it was just before midnight, which gave her half an hour to rush down the Embankment, go under the Borodino Bridge, hurry through the garden in front of the Kiev Railway Station and get to the Kievskaya Metro Station.

If she missed the last metro, she would either have to take a cab, which she could ill afford, or go back to the hotel and ask Molka Lev to help her sneak into an empty room for the night. Katrina did not want to ask Molka Lev's help. She did not want to ask anyone's help. She had, in her thirty-two years, been less than pleased with the help offered to her by men and women alike. There was always a price to pay. Besides, Katrina carried a little bag whose contents she did not wish to share with Molka or anyone on the night staff. It was a gift, a gift she would place on Agda's pillow where Agda would find it in the morning. Katrina loved giving gifts to Agda, who truly delighted in even a small tin of lemon drops.

It was December and a light snow was falling on two days of old snow blown about by a bitter wind off the river. Katrina did not mind the cold or the snow. The colder it was the less likely she was to be bothered by a drunk or the new breed of muggers and, she noted appreciatively, at this hour and in this weather she was likely to be undisturbed.

A dog howled and the heel of Katrina's left boot struck a patch of ice under a thin spot of snow. She almost slipped but held her balance and managed to keep from falling or dropping her precious package.

Katrina was bundled tight in Agda's lined cloth coat over her own wool sweater with the high neck. A wool hat was pulled and tied to cover her ears and pink cheeks. Katrina Ivanova was no beauty. That she knew, but she was certainly not ugly. Her body was straight, solid if a bit heavy, and her skin was pink and clear. Her hair was as blonde as it had been when the photograph on the dresser had been taken on the day of her third birthday.

A sound behind her. The rustling of wind and snow in the trees or something alive, a dog, yes, a dog. The incidence of attacks on women had, since Gorbachev's new Soviet Union, risen sharply, a sixty-four percent rise in one year, a total of three hundred and six attacks inside Moscow, including one hundred and six attempted rapes, fifty-three of which were successful.

The dog barked again, close by as Katrina moved along.

She was very good at statistics. Katrina loved statistics. There was certainty in them. Once they were established, they did not change, did not become something else. Before her, through the haze of white, she could see the lights of Bolshaya Dorogomilovskaya Street where the bridge crossed into the heart of the city.

It was, she decided, a very large dog and it was moving toward her from behind making a very odd kind of deep wet sound as if its jowls were slapping with . . .

Moscovites own 65,000 dogs, 250,000 cats, and tens of thousands of caged birds, she thought to divert her imagination. Other animals were rare, though she had seen a few monkeys. It struck Katrina with little satisfaction that Ivanovs and Ivanovas outnumbered dogs in Moscow by 35,000. There were even 25,000 more Kuznetsovs than dogs in Moscow. The odds were better that one would be followed by a Kuznetsov than a terrier.

It was not a dog. The thought came to Katrina quite unbidden. She did not want that thought and it surprised her.

Another fifty yards to go. There was no one in sight. The street lamps along the embankment were on, though they were dimmed by the swirl of snow. She could hurry and risk falling or she could go a bit slower, a bit more sure of foot, and risk the animal closing on her before she reached the avenue.

Katrina chose to hurry. Behind her through the whoosh of a gust of wind she heard the animal bounding forth, heard the crunch of snow under its paws.

Katrina was frightened. There was no doubting that now, no lying to herself. She would never make the street. She could see that now. Some animal from the circus or a laboratory nearby had escaped. She would tell the newspapers, the television.
Pravda
was carrying all manner of complaint, now.

Katrina shifted her package under her arm, reached into her heavy red plastic purse and came out with the Tokarev 7.62mm automatic pistol Agda had given her less than a year ago when Katrina had discovered the latest statistics on attacks. Agda was incredibly superstitious, but she was also quite practical.

Katrina Ivanova dropped her purse gently in the snow, gripped the revolver in her wool-gloved hands, turned and leveled the weapon at the animal she knew would be behind her. Agda would have been very proud of her.

The creature she saw moving toward her like a sudden dark stroke of a paintbrush on the white canvas of snow was no animal that Katrina had ever seen before. It was loping toward her, the size of a large man. It was covered in coarse grey hair which quivered in the light of the full moon. Its wide mouth was open, its teeth . . . Katrina fired as the creature crouched and sprang toward her, using its thick rear legs to launch it into the air. She fired again. The creature groaned, hit the ground and landed directly in front of Katrina, raising itself above her, its forepaws held up, curved claws dark against the grey fur, teeth sharp and . . . was that blood? Katrina fired again into the creature's throbbing chest as it swung at her. Pain, like an injection of ice, ran through Katrina's shoulder, sending her stumbling backward, losing the gun in snow and fear.

She was on her back, looking up, trying to right herself with her one good arm as the creature took a step toward her, the moon haloing its head, which turned upward as it bellowed so loudly that Katrina covered her ears, screamed and closed her eyes.

She awaited the teeth, the claws, the horror of the creature's breath, but it didn't come. And then came the ultimate terror, that she would open her eyes and it would be there, inches from her face, playing a game, waiting for her to see it so it could rip her face with its teeth.

Katrina whimpered once and opened her eyes with a gasp. There was nothing before her but the snow and the top of a building. She turned on her good arm to left and then right. Perhaps it was standing behind her?

She turned her head, now expecting her throat to be torn out with a rip of those claws. But nothing. Katrina sat up and touched her torn arm, an arm which had no feeling. And then she saw it. Before her in the snow lay not a monster but a naked woman. The woman was face down and blood was coming through a hole in her back. The sight was quite unexpectedly beautiful, for the woman was slender and pale white with dark hair that billowed delicately in the wind.

Katrina crawled forward in her pain, inched her way on her knees, holding her screaming arm to her chest, and touched the woman, who was still warm and obviously dead. It could not be. It had not been this woman who had attacked her. Katrina Ivanova believed in facts, evidence, statistics. It was Agda who was superstitious, Agda from the Ukraine who had melted down the silver candlesticks her grandfather had taken from the Summer Palace of the Tsar during the Revolution, candlesticks which had been her mother's prized possession. It was Agda who had insisted that they be turned into bullets for the gun she gave Katrina.

Getting to her feet, afraid that she would faint, Katrina looked around and decided that the closest help she could get would be on the street in front of her, the way she had been going. She staggered toward the lights, considering the possibility of not reporting this nightmare, of simply getting a cab and going home. Then she remembered her prize, her gift for Agda, and it became very important, more important than help, the touch of sanity she must have. Her foot hit the gun in the snow but Katrina did not stop to pick it up. Her eyes frantically searched the snow, took in the dead woman's body.