A werewolf among us

projectile pistol and the knife, we can leave."
    Jubal's face flushed, and he stepped toward St. Cyr with his blocky fists bunched at his sides again, the same pose he had assumed the first time the cyberdetective had implied that the murderer might be a member of his family. "What in the hell is this, Sc Cyr? Do you want to leave all of us defenseless? You've already told us that—"
    "Jubal," St. Cyr said, cutting him short, "I think you're one of the most short-sighted sonsofbitches I've ever met."
    The old man stopped and stared at the detective as if St. Cyr were some new, alien species. He was clearly not accustomed to being spoken to like that, without deference and respect. He had just walked into a brick wall.
    "I think you've had money too long," St. Cyr went on. "You've always had life easy, never had to really compete, and now a few important parts of your brain seem to have atrophied."
    It felt good, awfully good.
    Emotional indulgence.
    Until this moment, the cyberdetective had not realized fully how much the household had weighted him down, how depressed he was by the emotional barrenness of this old man. He looked at Tina and realized that her death would be taken as lightly as the others, absorbed by the family—a few tears shed, a few minutes of loss, and then back to the canvas or the typewriter or the guitar, back to the art. Somehow, that was more evil than the killer, more despicable than bloody murder.
    St. Cyr said, "I told you the killer was here, among us. I haven't the faintest notion, yet, who he is. But I'm not taking any chances that he'll be on that bus, jammed in with the rest of us, with a weapon in his hand. I feel as if I'm on the verge of figuring out this whole damned thing, that it could break any time now. But until it does, until I can positively nail someone with it, we're taking every possible precaution. Now, please, hand over your weapons."
    They complied with his demand.
    The old man handed his gun over last, reluctantly. He watched as St. Cyr located a large piece of buffing cloth in the car-washing supplies cabinet and bundled the artillery together. He said, "I hope you'll remember that I'm still your employer, Mr. St. Cyr. I hired you; I pay you; and I can let you go."
    "Bullshit," St. Cyr said.
    "Fantastic!" Tina chimed in, grinning. "You're actually getting emotional; you actually sound like a human being; Baker."
    "Scared," he said. "That's all."
    "That's human enough," she said.
    He smiled, nodded and said, "Let's get aboard. The sooner we're among other people, the better I'll feel."
    The others trooped in ahead of him, providing him an opportunity to massage his bandaged shoulder, which had begun to throb painfully. He should have obtained a booster shot of pain-killer from the autodoc before they left, but he hadn't felt that there was time for that.
    Teddy was the last in the bus; he swung into his niche beside the seat designed for a human driver. By-passing the wheel, he plucked several control leads from beneath the dash and plugged them into his gleaming body trunk.
    St. Cyr sat in the last seat in the bus, a position from which he could observe everyone else. He touched his shoulder, pressed down on the bandages and realized that was no good. He was just going to have to be stoical about it.
    Up front, Teddy's head swiveled on his body trunk and faced the rear of the bus, an unnecessary gesture, since the robot had no face except for the soft green sight receptors. He said, "Mr. St. Cyr, something has happened to the power cell."
    "For the bus?"
    "Yes. I am not even recording a trickle charge on the meter."
    "Check it out"
    The master unit detached itself from the control cables, opened the door and exited the bus. It opened a panel on St. Cyr's side of the vehicle, took one look in the small cavity that housed the compact drive system, closed the panel and came back into the bus. "The power cell is gone, Mr. St. Cyr."
    "Gone?" He felt ponderously slow, as if he were reacting to the world at quarter speed, a man moving through syrup.
    "Someone removed it."
    Wearily, St. Cyr rose and herded them out of the bus again. No one objected, not even Jubal. Apparently some of his own fear had finally filtered down to them.
    "We'll go in two groundcars," he told them. "Three of us in each, Teddy driving the first car. We keep the vehicles close together and keep an especially good eye on each other."
    Perhaps the other power cells are also gone.
    St. Cyr nodded to