Free The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simak Page A

impossible to obtain would be made available.
    SENATOR HORTON: And, may I ask, how did this all work out?
    DR. LUKAS: That, sir, is hard to say. There are no reports as to results. There are records of them—both of them—having been sent out. But after that there is only silence.
    SENATOR HORTON: Your surmise would be that something went wrong?
    DR. LUKAS: Yes. But I can’t imagine what it might have been.
    SENATOR HORTON: Something to do with the simulated men, perhaps.
    DR. LUKAS: Yes, that could be the case. There is no way of knowing.
    SENATOR HORTON: They didn’t work, perhaps.
    DR. LUKAS: Oh, they would have performed their function. There could have been no reason for them not to perform as they were planned. They would have had to work.
    SENATOR HORTON: I ask these questions because I know that if I do not, my distinguished colleague will. Now let me ask you one of my own. Could such a, simulated man be constructed today?
    DR. LUKAS: Yes, with the blueprints in our hands, there would be not a bit of trouble to build another one.
    SENATOR HORTON: But no others were ever built, so far as you know, that is.
    DR. LUKAS: So far as I know.
    SENATOR HORTON: Would you care to speculate …
    DR. LUKAS: No, senator, I would not.
    SENATOR STONE: If I may interrupt. Dr. Lukas, do you have some sort of descriptive term for the process which was employed to make such men as these?
    DR. LUKAS: Yes, as a matter of fact, we have. It is called the werewolf principle.

11
    In the parking lot across the street a man carried a tub out of the back door of one of the houses and set it on the patio at the edge of the pool. A tree was planted in the tub and when the man had set it down and moved away the tree began to ring—emitting a sound like the happy ringing of many silver bells.
    Blake, sitting on a chair and wrapped in a robe of candy-colored stripes, leaned his elbows on the railing five stories above the street, and strained his ears, trying to make certain that the ringing really came from the tree. It seemed incredible, but there had been no such silver sound until the tub in which the tree was planted had been set beside the pool. And his ears told him that the sound did, indeed, come from the direction of the house.
    Washington dozed in the blue smokiness of a late October afternoon. A few ground cars went past on the boulevard below, their air jet making soft, sighing sounds as they moved along. In the far distance, over the Potomac, a few floaters bobbed along—floating chairs with humans sitting in them. The houses in the parking lot were lined up in orderly rows, each with its bright green lawn, its beds of brightly colored autumn flowers, the blue shine of the pools. By leaning forward and craning his neck, he could just make out his own house, down the boulevard, third row from the front, squatting on the foundation where it had put down.
    His nearest neighbor on the solarium porch was an elderly man, muffled to the ears in a thick red blanket, blank eyes staring out into the space beyond the railing, seeing nothing, mumbling to himself. A short distance away two patients were playing a game that might have been checkers.
    An attendant came hurrying across the porch.
    â€œMr. Blake,” he said, “there is someone here to see you.”
    Blake rose and turned around. Standing in the door that led out onto the porch was a woman, tall, dark-haired, wearing a robe of pale rose, a material that had the sheen of silk.
    â€œMiss Horton,” said Blake. “Yes, please show her in.”
    She came across the porch and held out her hand to him.
    â€œI drove down to your village yesterday afternoon,” she said, “and found that you had left.”
    â€œI am sorry,” said Blake, “that I was not there. Won’t you please sit down.”
    She seated herself in a chair and Blake perched on the railing.
    â€œYou and your father are in Washington,” he said. “The