A werewolf among us

head mounted in your suite. I saw it the first day I was here."
    "I killed it a good many years ago," Hirschel said. "Before the species was eradicated by Climicon."
    "Was that the only one you shot?"
    "No. There were two others. But I didn't see any sense in having them mounted."
    "What was done with them?" He already knew the general answer to that, but he wanted to get everything as exact as he could.
    "I gutted, cured and tanned the hides, left the heads intact except for the eyes. I knew the species was slated for eradication, and I knew that the hides would be worth a great deal of money some day, for museums and such. I have a lot of animal skins stored here on the second level. It's another eccentricity that Jubal allows me." He smiled at Jubal, and St. Cyr thought there was genuine affection on the older man's part for the younger.
    The cyberdetective pulled the last item from the paper bag. It was one of the wolf hides that Hirschel had prepared and stored. "Teddy used it to plant wolf hairs with the bodies—and as a partial disguise when he attacked me in the gardens. He was wise enough to realize that if I were hallucinating, this minimal diversion would confuse me enough to keep me from recognizing him. He was also clever enough to disguise himself at all, on the chance that he might fail to kill me then—as he did."
    "But," Jubal said, "what about the TDX-4, the drug he used on you? He could destroy all of this when he had finished with all of us—but the house computer would keep a record of the drug purchase. The police, if they were clever enough, could figure him out on the basis of that—and find out who illegally programmed him to kill."
    "Except that Teddy didn't buy the hallucinogenic drug. It was already here, in the house."
    "Where?" the patriarch asked. "No one in this house uses hallucinogens." He spoke with smug authority.
    "I use them," Alicia said. She said so little, spoke so seldom, that when she did say anything her gentle voice cut like a knife.
    "You?" her husband asked, uncomprehending.
    No one else spoke.
    Alicia said, "There are times—times when I simply can't stand it any more—when I need some escape."
    "Can't stand what?" he asked.
    Reluctantly, sadly, but beyond tears now, she said, "This house, my family, the coldness, the way we seldom speak to one another, the fact that we barely know each other…"
    Jubal was speechless. This was a time of changes, large changes, or at least a time of intimations of changes, and he was going to have to make a great many adjustments, examine a long list of his cherished attitudes. None of it would be easy.
    "Have you noticed that you're missing any TDX?" the cyberdetective asked the lonely woman.
    "I haven't noticed."
    "We'll look later," St. Cyr said. "But I'm certain that your supply has been reduced."
    "Okay, okay," Jubal said, suddenly impatient, trying to wipe out his hurt and confusion with feigned anger. "The proof is conclusive. But who got to Teddy? Who re-programmed him
with all these directives to kill?"
    "May I try to answer that?" Hirschel asked. He was grinning, his hands swinging at his sides, like a high school kid meeting his first date.
    "Go on," St. Cyr said.
    "Teddy was never
re
-programmed," Hirschel said.
    "Right," the detective said.
    "The illegal directives were worked into his program in the factory," Hirschel said. "From the moment that he came here, he was prepared to kill everyone in the house."
    "Once he had made the proper impression, generated trust, and got the necessary tools together," St. Cyr added.
    Hirschel smiled and said, "And the man who programmed him was Walter Dannery."
    "The man I fired?" Jubal asked.
    "The same," Hirschel said. "Right?"
    "I believe so," St. Cyr said.
    "But that's insane!" Jubal said.
    "I have no certain proof of it yet," the cyberdetective said. "But I probably will have in the morning—at least a bit of circumstantial evidence. Consider that Reiss Master Units are produced on
Ionus, the same world to which Dannery went after he lost his job here. Also consider that he was one of your chief roboticists, as you've told me, and would very likely be a candidate for executive-level employment with Reiss."
    Jubal looked as if he had been caught on the back of the head by a boomerang just after stating flatly that such toys didn't work.
    St. Cyr got down from the table and began to put the evidence into the paper sack again. He said, "Did you have any proof—anything