The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simak Read Free Book Online Page A

but not when or how or under what conditions I encountered it.”
    â€œI’d give a lot,” said Daniels, “for us to get a clue or two from that background of yours.”
    â€œI simply live with it,” said Blake. “That’s the only way I can get along.”
    â€œIt’s the only sensible approach,” Daniels agreed. “You have a good day fishing and I’ll see you tomorrow. Seems to me there are some trout streams out in your locality. Hunt up one of them.”
    â€œThank you, doctor.”
    The phone clicked off and the screen went blank. Blake swung around.
    â€œAs soon as you’ve finished breakfast,” said the House, “we’ll have the floater waiting on the patio. You’ll find fishing tackle in the back bedroom, which is used as a sort of store house, and Kitchen will fix you up a lunch. In the meantime I’ll look up a good trout stream and have directions for you and …”
    â€œCut out that yammering!” howled the Kitchen. “Breakfast is getting cold.”

8
    The water foamed through the jam of fallen trees and brush that in some earlier springtime flood had been caught between the clump of birch and the high cut bank that marked a sharp curve in the stream—foamed through the barrier and then smoothed out in a quiet, dark pool.
    Carefully Blake guided the chair-like floater to the ground at one end of the barrier, close to the clump of birch, snapped off the gravity field as it came to rest. For a moment he sat in the chair unmoving, listening to the churning of the water, charmed by the deep quietness of the pool. Ahead of him the mountain range lifted in the sky.
    Finally he got out of the floater and from its back unstrapped the hamper of lunch to get at his fishing tackle. He set the hamper to one side on the grassy bank from which the clump of birches grew.
    Something scrabbled in the dam of twisted tree trunks that lay across the stream. At the sound, Blake spun about. A pair of beady eyes stared out at him from beneath a log.
    A mink, he thought. Or perhaps an otter. Peering out at him from its den inside the log jam.
    â€œHello, there,” said Blake. “Do you mind if I try my luck.”
    â€œHello, there,” said the otter-mink, in a high and piping voice. “What is this luck that you wish to try? Please elucidate.”
    â€œWhat was that you …” Blake’s voice ran down to a stop.
    The otter-mink emerged from beneath the log. It was neither an otter nor a mink. It was a bipedal being—like something that had stepped from the pages of a children’s book. A hairy rodent snout was topped by a high domed skull from which flared a pair of pointed ears with tassels on the tips of them. It stood two feet high or so and its body was covered with a smooth, brown coat of fur. It wore a pair of bright red trousers that were mostly pockets and its hands were equipped with long and slender fingers.
    Its snout twitched. “Would you, perhaps,” it asked in its squeaking voice, “have food inside that basket?”
    â€œWhy, yes,” said Blake. “I take it you are hungry.”
    It was absurd, of course. In just a little while—in another minute, if not less—this illustration from a children’s book would simply go away and he could get on with his fishing.
    â€œI’m starving,” said the illustration. “The people who usually set out food for me have gone on a vacation. I’ve been scrounging ever since. Have you, perhaps, sometime in your life, tried scrounging for your food?”
    â€œI don’t think,” said Blake, “that I ever have.”
    It did not disappear. It kept on staying and it kept on talking and there was no getting rid of it.
    Good God, thought Blake, here I go again!
    â€œIf you are hungry,” he said, “we should get at the hamper. Is there anything, especially, that you like to eat?”
    â€œI