The Compleat Werewolf
And Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Anthony Boucher
Contents
The Compleat Werewolf
The Pink Caterpillar
Q. U. R.
Robinc
Snulbug
Mr. Lupescu
They Bite
Expedition
We Print the Truth
The Ghost of Me
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Compleat Werewolf
The professor glanced at the note:
Don’t be silly—Gloria.
Wolfe Wolf crumpled the sheet of paper into a yellow ball and hurled it out the window into the sunshine of the bright campus spring. He made several choice and profane remarks in fluent Middle High German.
Emily looked up from typing the proposed budget for the departmental library. “I’m afraid I didn’t understand that, Professor Wolf. I’m weak on Middle High.”
“Just improvising,” said Wolf, and sent a copy of the Journal of English and Germanic Philology to follow the telegram.
Emily rose from the typewriter. “There’s something the matter. Did the committee reject your monograph on Hager?”
“That monumental contribution to human knowledge? Oh, no. Nothing so important as that.”
“But you’re so upset—”
“The office wife!” Wolf snorted. “And pretty damned polyandrous at that, with the whole department on your hands. Go away.”
Emily’s dark little face lit up with a flame of righteous anger that removed any trace of plainness. “Don’t talk to me like that, Mr. Wolf. I’m simply trying to help you. And it isn’t the whole department. It’s—”
Professor Wolf picked up an inkwell, looked after the telegram and the Journal, then set the glass pot down again. “No. There are better ways of going to pieces. Sorrows drown easier than they smash. Get Herbrecht to take my two-o’clock, will you?”
“Where are you going?”
“To hell in sectors. So long.”
“Wait. Maybe I can help you. Remember when the dean jumped you for serving drinks to students? Maybe I can—”
Wolf stood in the doorway and extended one arm impressively, pointing with that curious index which was as long as the middle finger. “Madam, academically you are indispensable. You are the prop and stay of the existence of this department. But at the moment this department can go to hell, where it will doubtless continue to need your invaluable services.”
“But don’t you see—” Emily’s voice shook. “No. Of course not. You wouldn’t see. You’re just a man—no, not even a man. You’re just Professor Wolf. You’re Woof-woof.”
Wolf staggered. “I’m what?”
“Woof-woof. That’s what everybody calls you because your name’s Wolfe Wolf. All your students, everybody. But you wouldn’t notice a thing like that. Oh, no. Woof-woof, that’s what you are.”
“This,” said Wolfe Wolf, “is the crowning blow. My heart is breaking, my world is shattered, I’ve got to walk a mile from the campus to find a bar; but all this isn’t enough. I’ve got to be called Woof-woof. Goodbye!”
He turned, and in the doorway caromed into a vast and yielding bulk, which gave out with a noise that might have been either a greeting of “Wolf!” or more probably an inevitable grunt of “Oof!”
Wolf backed into the room and admitted Professor Fearing, paunch, pince-nez, cane and all. The older man waddled over to his desk, plumped himself down, and exhaled a long breath. “My dear boy,” he gasped. “Such impetuosity.”
“Sorry, Oscar.”
“Ah, youth—” Professor Fearing fumbled about for a handkerchief, found none, and proceeded to polish his pince-nez on his somewhat stringy necktie. “But why such haste to depart? And why is Emily crying?”
“Is she?”
“You see?” said Emily hopelessly, and muttered “Woof-woof” into her damp handkerchief.
“And why do copies of the JEGP fly about my head as I harmlessly cross the campus? Do we have teleportation on our hands?”
“Sorry,” Wolf repeated curtly. “Temper. Couldn’t stand that ridiculous argument of Glocke’s. Goodbye.”
“One moment.” Professor Fearing fished into one of his unnumbered handkerchiefless pockets and produced a sheet of yellow paper. “I believe this is yours?”
Wolf snatched at it and quickly converted it into confetti.
Fearing chuckled. “How well I remember when Gloria was a student here! I was thinking of it only last night when I saw her in Moonbeams and Melody. How she did upset this whole department! Heavens, my boy, if I’d been a younger man myself—”
“I’m going. You’ll see about Herbrecht, Emily?”
Emily sniffed and nodded.
“Come, Wolfe.” Fearing’s voice had grown more serious. “I didn’t mean to plague you. But you mustn’t take these things too hard. There are better ways of finding consolation than in losing your temper or getting drunk.”
“Who said anything about—”
“Did you need to say it? No, my boy, if you were to— You’re not a religious man, are you?”
“Good God, no,” said Wolf contradictorily.
“If only you were. … If I might make a suggestion, Wolfe, why don’t you come over to the Temple tonight? We’re having very special services. They might take your mind off Glo—off your troubles.”
“Thanks, no. I’ve always meant to visit your Temple—I’ve heard the damnedest rumors about it—but not tonight. Some other time."
“Tonight would be especially interesting.”
“Why? What’s so special of a feast day about April thirtieth?”
Fearing shook his gray head. “It is shocking how ignorant a scholar can be outside of his chosen field. … But you know the place, Wolfe; I’ll hope to see you there tonight.”
“Thanks. But my troubles don’t need any supernatural solutions. A couple of zombies will do nicely, and I do not mean serviceable stiffs. Goodbye, Oscar.” He was halfway through the door before he added as an afterthought, “’Bye, Emily.”
“Such rashness,” Fearing murmured. “Such impetuosity. Youth is a wonderful thing to enjoy, is it not, Emily?”
Emily said nothing, but plunged into typing the proposed budget as though all the fiends of hell were after her, as indeed many of them were.
The sun was setting, and Wolf’s tragic account of his troubles had laid an egg, too. The bartender had polished every glass in the joint and still the repetitive tale kept pouring forth. He was torn between a boredom new even in his experience and a professional admiration for a customer who could consume zombies indefinitely.
“Did I tell you about the time she flunked the mid-term?” Wolf demanded truculently.
“Only three times,” said the bartender.
“All right, then; I’ll tell you. Yunnerstand, I don’t do things like this. Profeshical ethons, that’s what’s I’ve got. But this was different. This wasn’t like somebody that doesn’t know because she wasn’t the kind of girl that has to know the kind of things a girl has to know if she’s the kind of girl that ought to know that kind of things. Yunnerstand?”
The bartender cast a calculating glance at the plump little man who sat alone at the end of the deserted bar, carefully nursing his gin-and-tonic.
“She made me see that. She made me see lossa things and I can still see the things she made me see the things. It wasn’t just like a professor falls for a coed, yunnerstand? This was different. This was wunnaful. This was like a whole new life, like.”
The bartender sidled down to the end of the bar. “Brother,” he whispered softly.
The little man
with the odd beard looked up from his gin-and-tonic. “Yes, colleague?”
“If I listen to that potted professor another five minutes, I’m going to start smashing up the joint. How’s about slipping down there and standing in for me, huh?”
The little man looked Wolf over and fixed his gaze especially on the hand that clenched the tall zombie glass. “Gladly, colleague,” he nodded.
The bartender sighed a gust of relief.
“She was Youth,” Wolf was saying intently to where the bartender had stood. “But it wasn’t just that. This was different. She was Life and Excitement and Joy and Ecstasy and stuff. Yunner—” He broke off and stared at the empty space. “Uh-mazing!” he observed. “Right before my very eyes. Uh-mazing!”
“You were saying, colleague?” the plump little man prompted from the adjacent stool.
Wolf turned. “So there you are. Did I tell you about the time I went to her house to check her term paper?”
“No. But I have a feeling you will.”
“Howja know? Well, this night—”
The little man drank slowly; but his glass was empty by the time Wolf had finished the account of an evening of pointlessly tentative flirtation. Other customers were drifting in, and the bar was now about a third full.
“—and ever since then—” Wolf broke off sharply. “That isn’t you,” he objected.
“I think it is, colleague.”
“But you’re a bartender and you aren’t a bartender.”
“No. I’m a magician.”
“Oh. That explains it. Now, like I was telling you— Hey! Your bald is beard.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your bald is beard. Just like your head. It’s all jussa fringe running around.”
“I like it that way.”
“And your glass is empty.”
“That’s all right too.”
“Oh, no it isn’t. It isn’t every night you get to drink with a man that proposed to Gloria Garton and got turned down. This is an occasion for celebration.” Wolf thumped loudly on the bar and held up his first two fingers.
The little man regarded their equal length. “No,” he said softly. “I think I’d better not. I know my capacity. If I have another—well, things might start happening.”
“Lettemappen! ”
“No. Please, colleague. I’d rather—”
The bartender brought the drinks. “Go on, brother,” he whispered. “Keep him quiet. I’ll do you a favor sometime.”
Reluctantly the little man sipped at his fresh gin-and-tonic.
The professor took a gulp of his nth zombie. “My name’s Woof-woof,” he proclaimed. “Lots of people call me Wolfe Wolf. They think that’s funny. But it’s really Woof-woof. Wazoors?”
The other paused a moment to decipher that Arabic-sounding word, then said, “Mine’s Ozymandias the Great.”
“That’s a funny name.”
“I told you, I’m a magician. Only I haven’t worked for a long time. Theatrical managers are peculiar, colleague. They don’t want a real magician. They won’t even let me show ’em my best stuff. Why, I remember one night in Darjeeling—”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. … Mr.—”
“You can call me Ozzy. Most people do.”
“Glad to meet you, Ozzy. Now, about this girl. This Gloria. Yunnerstand, donya?”
“Sure, colleague.”
“She thinks a professor of German is nothing. She wants something glamorous. She says if I was an actor, now, or a G-man— Yunnerstand?”
Ozymandias the Great nodded.
“Awright, then! So yunnerstand. Fine. But whatddayou want to keep talking about it for? Yunnerstand. That’s that. To hell with it.”
Ozymandias’ round and fringed face brightened. “Sure,” he said, and added recklessly, “Let’s drink to that.”
They clinked glasses and drank. Wolf carelessly tossed off a toast in Old Low Frankish, with an unpardonable error in the use of the genitive.
The two men next to them began singing “My Wild Irish Rose,” but trailed off disconsolately. “What we need,” said the one with the derby, “is a tenor.”
“What I need,” Wolf muttered, “is a cigarette.”
“Sure,” said Ozymandias the Great. The bartender was drawing beer directly in front of them. Ozymandias reached across the bar, removed a lighted cigarette from the barkeep’s ear, and handed it to his companion.
“Where’d that come from?”
“I don’t quite know. All I know is how to get them. I told you I was a magician.”
“Oh. I see. Pressajijijation.”
“No. Not a prestidigitator; I said a magician. Oh, blast it! I’ve done it again. More than one gin-and-tonic and I start showing off.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Wolf flatly. “No such thing as magicians. That’s just as silly as Oscar Fearing and his Temple and what’s so special about April thirtieth anyway?”
The bearded man frowned. “Please, colleague. Let’s forget it”
“No. I don’t believe you. You pressajijijated that cigarette. You didn’t magic it.” His voice began to rise. “You’re a fake.”
“Please, brother,” the barkeep whispered. “Keep him quiet.”
“All right,” said Ozymandias wearily. “I’ll show you something that can’t be prestidigitation.” The couple adjoining had begun to sing again. “They need a tenor. All right; listen!”
And the sweetest, most ineffably Irish tenor ever heard joined in on the duet. The singers didn’t worry about the source; they simply accepted the new voice gladly and were spurred on to their very best, with the result that the bar knew the finest harmony it had heard since the night the Glee Club was suspended en masse.
Wolf looked impressed, but shook his head. “That’s not magic either. That’s ventrocolism.”
“As a matter of strict fact, that was a street singer who was killed in the Easter Rebellion. Fine fellow, too; never heard a better voice, unless it was that night in Darjeeling when—”
“Fake!” said Wolfe Wolf loudly and belligerently.
Ozymandias once more contemplated that long index finger. He looked at the professor’s dark brows that met in a straight line over his nose. He picked his companion’s limpish hand off the bar and scrutinized the palm. The growth of hair was not marked, but it was perceptible.
The magician chortled. “And you sneer at magic!”
“Whasso funny about me sneering at magic?”
Ozymandias lowered his voice. “Because, my fine furry friend, you are a werewolf.”
The Irish martyr had begun “Rose of Tralee,” and the two mortals were joining in valiantly.
“I’m what?”
“A werewolf.”
“But there isn’t any such thing. Any fool knows that.”
“Fools,” said Ozymandias, “know a great deal which the wise do not. There are werewolves. There always have been, and quite probably always will be.” He spoke as calmly and assuredly as though he were mentioning that the earth was round. “And there are three infallible physical signs: the meeting of eyebrows, the long index finger, the hairy palms. You have all three. And even your name is an indication. Family names do not come from nowhere. Every Smith has an ancestor somewhere who was a smith. Every Fisher comes from a family that once fished. And your name is Wolf.”
The statement was so quiet, so plausible, that Wolf faltered.
“But a werewolf is a man that changes into a wolf. I’ve never done that. Honest I haven’t.”
“A mammal,” said Ozymandias, “is an animal that bears its young alive and suckles them. A virgin is nonetheless a mammal. Because you have never changed does not make you any the less a werewolf.”
“But a werewolf—” Suddenly Wolf’s eyes lit up. “A werewolf! But that’s even better than a G-man! Now I can show Gloria!”
“What on earth do you mean, colleague?”
Wolf was climbing down from his stool. The intense excitement
of this brilliant new idea seemed to have sobered him. He grabbed the little man by the sleeve. “Come on. We’re going to find a nice quiet place. And you’re going to prove you’re a magician.”
“But how?”
“You’re going to show me how to change!”
Ozymandias finished his gin-and-tonic, and with it drowned his last regretful hesitation. “Colleague,” he announced, “you’re on!”
Professor Oscar Fearing, standing behind the curiously carved lectern of the Temple of the Dark Truth, concluded the reading of the prayer with mumbling sonority. “And on this night of all nights, in the name of the black light that glows in the darkness, we give thanks!” He closed the parchment-bound book and faced the small congregation, calling out with fierce intensity, “Who wishes to give his thanks to the Lower Lord?”
A cushioned dowager rose. “I give thanks!” she shrilled excitedly. “My Ming Choy was sick, even unto death. I took of her blood and offered it to the Lower Lord, and he had mercy and restored her to me!”
Behind the altar an electrician checked his switches and spat disgustedly. “Bugs! Every last one of ’em!”
The man who was struggling into a grotesque and horrible costume paused and shrugged. “They pay good money. What’s it to us if they’re bugs?”
A tall, thin old man had risen uncertainly to his feet. “I give thanks!” he cried. “I give thanks to the Lower Lord that I have finished my great work. My protective screen against magnetic bombs is a tried and proven success, to the glory of our country and science and the Lord.”
“Crackpot,” the electrician muttered.
The man in costume peered around the altar. “Crackpot, hell! That’s Chiswick from the physics department. Think of a man like that falling for this stuff! And listen to him: He’s even telling about the government’s plans for installation. You know, I’ll bet you one of these fifth columnists could pick up something around here.”
There was silence in the Temple when the congregation had finished its thanksgiving. Professor Fearing leaned over the lectern and spoke quietly and impressively. “As you know, brothers in Darkness, tonight is May Eve, the thirtieth of April, the night consecrated by the Church to that martyr missionary St. Walpurgis, and by us to other and deeper purposes. It is on this night, and this night only, that we may directly give our thanks to the Lower Lord himself. Not in wanton orgy and obscenity, as the Middle Ages misconceived his desires, but in praise and in the deep, dark joy that issues forth from Blackness.”
The Compleat Werewolf Page 1
