Clifford Simak - The Werewolf Principle

I am not certain why I write you this. Possibly because you are the only one I can write it to — for, in many ways, you are actually myself.

It seems strange that in one lifetime any one man should have been called upon to make two such similar decisions. For when I was selected as the one whose mind should be impressed upon your brain, I felt many of the reservations which I now am feeling. I felt that, in many ways, my mind might not be the kind of mind that would be the best for you. I had prejudices and biases that might be a disservice to pass on. All these years I have not been easy about it, wondering often if my mind had served you well or ill.

Man, indeed, has come far from the simple beast he was when we consider questions such as these. I have sometimes wondered if we might not have come too far, if in the vanity of intelligence we may not be treading upon forbidden ground. But these thoughts have come to me only lately. They are the accumulated doubts of a man who is growing old and so should be discounted.

It must seem to you that this letter is a rambling one, and to little purpose. If you will bear with me, I shall try to get, within a reasonable space of time, to the little purpose it may have.

Through the years I have thought of you often and have wondered how you were, if you were still alive and, if still alive, when you would come back. I think that you must realize by now that some, perhaps even many, of the men who fabricated you thought of you only as a problem in biochemistry. I think that by this time, having lived with it all these years, you will not be disturbed by so frank a statement. I think that you must be the kind of man who would realize it and accept it.

But I have never thought of you in any other way than as another human, in all truth a man very like myself. As you know, I was an only child. I had no brother and no sister. I have often wondered if I have thought of you as the brother that I never had. But in late years I think I know the truth of that. You are not a brother. You are closer than a brother. You are my second self, equal to me in every way and never secondary.

And it is in the hope that, if you do return, even if I physically am dead, you may want to contact me that I write this letter. I am very curious about what you have been doing and what you may be thinking. It has seemed to me that, in view of where you've been and the work you have been doing, you may have developed some interesting and illuminating viewpoints.

Whether you do contact me must be left to your own judgement. I am not entirely sure that the two of us should talk, although I'd like to very much. I'll leave it up to you in all confidence that you'll know what's best to do.

I am, at the moment, very much concerned with the question of whether it is wise for the mind of one man to go on and on. It occurs to me that, while mind may be the greater part of any man, man is not mind alone. There is more involved in man than wisdom and memory and the ability to absorb facts and develop viewpoints. Can a man orient himself in the never-never land such as must exist when the mind alone survives? He may remain a man, of course, but there still is the question of his humanity. Does he become more or less than human?

Perhaps, if you feel it is proper we should talk, you can tell me what you think of all of this.

But if you believe it is better that we remain apart, please be assured that if I should somehow know, I would understand. And in such a case, I would have you know that my best wishes and my love go with you for ever.

Sincerely,

Theodore Roberts

Blake folded the letter and thrust it back into the pocket of his robe.

Still Andrew Blake, he thought, and not Theodore Roberts. Teddy Roberts, maybe, but never Theodore Roberts.

And if he sat down before a phone and dialled the Mind Bank number, what would he have to say when Theodore Roberts came upon the line? What could he say? For he had nothing he could offer. They would be two men, each needing help, each looking to the other for the help that neither one could give.

He could say: I am a werewolf — that's what the papers call me. I am only part a man, no more than one-third a man. The rest of me is something else, something that you've never heard of, something that you could not credit, having heard of it. I am no longer human and there's no place here for me, no place upon the Earth. I belong nowhere. I'm a monster and a freak and I can only hurt anyone I touch.

And that was right. He would hurt anyone he touched. Elaine Horton, who had kissed him — a girl that he could love, that he perhaps already loved. Although he could love her only with the human part of him, with one third of him. And he could hurt her father, that marvellous old man with the ramrod back and the ramrod principles. And hurt as well that young doctor, Daniels, who had been his first, and for a time, his only friend.

He could hurt them all — he would hurt them all unless…

And that was it. Unless.

There was something he must do, some action he must take.

He searched his mind for this thing that he must do and it was not there.

He rose slowly from the steps and turned towards the gate, then turned back again and went into the chapel, pacing slowly down the aisle.

The place was bushed and shadowed. An electric candelabra, mounted on the lectern, did little to drive back the shadows, a feeble campfire glow burning in the darkened emptiness of a desolated plain.

A place to think. A place to scheme, to huddle for a time. A place to array his thoughts and align the situation and see what he must do.

He reached the front of the building and moved over from the aisle to sit down on one of the seats. But he did not sit down. He remained standing, buttressed by the twilit quiet — a quiet that was emphasized rather than broken by the soft sound of the wind in the pines outside.

This was the decision point, he knew. Here, finally, he had come to that time and place from which there was no retreat. He had run before, and ran to a certain purpose, but now there was no longer any virtue in the simple and impulsive act of fleeing. For there was no longer any place to flee to — he had reached the ultimate point and now, if he were to run again, he must know what he was running to.

Here, in this little town, he had found who and what he was and this town was a dead-end. The whole planet was a dead-end and there was no place for him upon this Earth, no place for him in humanity.

For while he was of Earth, he could lay no claim to humanity. He was a hybrid, rather — out of man's terrible scheming had arisen something that had not heretofore existed.

He was a team, a team of three different beings. That team had the opportunity and the capacity to work upon, and perhaps to solve, a basic universal problem, but it was not a problem that had specifically to do with the planet Earth or the life that resided on the Earth. He could do nothing here and nothing could be done for him.

On some other planet, perhaps, a bleak and barren planet where there'd be no interference, where there was no culture and no cultural distraction — perhaps there he could perform the function — he, the team, not he the human, but he, the three of them together.

Out of the mists of time and distance he remembered once again the headiness of the realization, when it had come to them, that within their grasp lay the possibility of resolving the purpose, and the meaning of the universe. Of, if not of solving it, of digging closer to the core of it than any intelligence had ever dug before.

He thought again of what lay in the power of those three minds that had been linked together by the unconscious and unintending ingenuity shaped by the minds of men — the power and the beauty, the wonder and the awfulness. And he quailed before the realization that, perhaps, here had been forged an instrument that outraged all the purpose and the meaning for which it now could seek throughout the universe.