A werewolf among us

snapped against the patio doors. Curiously, its fury seemed pale now. He had watched the hunter defeat it; the hunter was now more charged, more fiercely powerful than any storm.
    Only a man
, the bio-computer said, without speaking.
    But who had he been? The laughing giant, bringing home two bloody pig heads as trophies, did not fit any of the descriptions of members of the Alderban family that he had obtained from his own reliable sources before setting out for Darma, and certainly not with anything that Teddy had told him. It was evident to
St. Cyr that the hunter had never undergone psychiatric hypno-keying to stimulate
his
creativity. He was elemental. He was blood, the fight, the stalk, rain and fire. He was positively no historical novelist like Dane, no sculptor like Jubal.
    St. Cyr walked to the communications board in the wall by his bed and called the house computer.
    "May I be of service?" a voice asked overhead.
    "I wish to speak to Teddy," he said.
    A moment later the master unit was on the line. "Yes, Mr. St. Cyr?"
    "I asked you who all was in the family, and you did not tell me everything."
    "Whom did I miss?" Teddy asked, concerned. He would be running a check of his own systems even as he spoke, searching for a faulty memory cell.
    "The big man with black hair and eyes. He was out hunting just now."
    "You mean Hirschel," Teddy said, as relieved as a robot could be.
    "Who is he?"
    "Hirschel is Jubal Alderban's uncle on his father's side of the family."
    "He lives here?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "Why didn't you mention him before?"
    The master unit said, "I suppose because of the way you asked the question. You wanted to know who was in the family. To that, I am programmed to reply as I did. If you had asked who was in the
household
, I would have told you about Hirschel."
    It was possible, St. Cyr thought, that the master unit had been given a narrow definition of the word "family" and that the restricted use he was permitted for that term had made it impossible for him to mention Hirschel. He really did not know enough about Reiss Master Units to be certain. His bio-computer assured him that, while most robotic servants should be equipped for cross-reference and broad spectrum recall, such a likelihood as this was not that improbable. Yet, emotionally, he could not escape the notion that Teddy had been trying to hide Hirschel's presence as long as he could.
    To what end?
    "Anything else, Mr. St. Cyr?"
    "No, Teddy," he said at last He broke the connection.
    St. Cyr showered, still wearing the turtle-shell machine, and lay down for a while before getting dressed for supper. He worked at the pieces of hay, cleared away a section of the stack but still could not find any needle. Reminding himself that the nap would have to be short and relying on the bio-computer to wake him, he fell asleep.
    The dream was about a man wearing a boar's head mask. The man was leading him along a road where the pavement was broken, jutting up in great slabs much higher than a man. Around them, the tottering buildings, filmed in gray smoke, leaned over the street, skewed out of square and ready to topple. When he woke from it an hour later, he was drenched in perspiration and felt as if the greasy smoke that layered the dead buildings now wrapped him in a dark, buttery sheath. The sheets were twisted around his legs. The pillowcase was sodden.
    While he showered and dressed, the bio-computer explained a few things about his dream.
    The man in the boar's head mask
: THE UNKNOWN.
    The damaged road
: THE PAST.
    The tottering buildings
: MEMORIES BEST LEFT BURIED.
    The reason you woke without letting it continue further
: FEAR OF WHERE THE ROAD WOULD END.
    St. Cyr hated these dream analyses, but he could not do anything to dissuade the bio-computer, which contributed what it deemed important whether he wished to hear from it or not. He refused to consider what it said. He was a detective. A detective did not have to investigate himself.
    In the top drawer of the nightstand he found the house guide—fifty pages of closely-packed information and ten pages of detailed maps. He located the main dining room, traced a path backwards to his own quarters, which were marked in red. Satisfied that he knew the way, a bit amazed that even the wealthiest families would require a house this size, he went downstairs to meet the suspects.
     

THREE:
Suspects
     
    Seven limited-response mechanicals rolled out of the wide kitchen doorway, two abreast