“And you?” he asked. “It cost you something, too.”
“Don’t you see,” she said. “I couldn’t stay. Once I knew, I simply couldn’t stay. I would have been a freak, as much as you. Living on and on. And once the senator should die, what would be left for me?”
He nodded, understanding, thinking of two people, two humans, facing that decision.
“Besides,” she said, “I belonged with you. I think I knew it from the first—from that moment you stumbled, all soaked and cold, into that old stone house.”
“The senator told me …”
“That I didn’t want to see you, that I didn’t want to talk with you.”
“But why?” he asked. “But why?”
“They were trying to scare you off,” she said. “They were afraid you wouldn’t go, that you’d try to cling to Earth. They wanted you to think there was nothing left for you on Earth. The senator and the mind of Theodore Roberts and all the rest of them. Because we had to go, you see. We are the instruments of Earth, the gift of the Earth to the universe. If the intelligences of the universe ever are to find out what is happening, what has happened, what will happen, what it’s all about, we can help in the doing of it.”
“Then we are of Earth? The Earth still claims us …”
“Of course,” she said. “Now that they know about us, the Earth is proud of us.”
He held her body close to his and knew that Earth finally was, and forever would be, home. That wherever they might go, humanity would be with them. For they were the extensions of humanity, the hand and mind of mankind reaching out into the mysteries of all eternity.
About the Author
During his fifty-five-year career, Clifford D. Simak produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time.
Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1967 by Clifford D. Simak
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1322-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Clifford D. Simak, The Werewolf Principle
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