Read The Werewolf Principle for Free Online Page A

you like instead?”
    â€œAnything you like. Just so it has no rabbits in it.”
    â€œBut, sir, we can work out some thousands of combinations.”
    â€œAnything you like,” said Blake, “but be sure there are no rabbits.”
    He turned from the window and went into the dining room. Eyes stared out at him from the walls—thousands of eyes, eyes without a single face, eyes plucked from many faces and plastered on the walls. And while there were some of them that went in pairs, there were others that stood alone. And every eye was staring straight at him.
    There were baby-blue eyes, with the look of wistful innocence, and the bloodshot eyes that glared with fearsomeness, the lecherous eye, the dimmed and rheumy eye of the very old. And they all knew him, knew who he was, and they stared at him in a horribly personal manner and if there had been mouths to go with the eyes they all would be talking at him, screaming at him, mouthing at him.
    â€œHouse!” he screamed.
    â€œWhat is the matter, sir?”
    â€œThese eyes!”
    â€œBut you said, sir, anything but rabbits. I though the eyes were quite novel …”
    â€œGet them out of here!” howled Blake.
    The eyes went away and in their place a beach led down to a seashore. The white sand ran down to the surging waves that came beating in and on a distant headland; scraggly, weather-beaten trees leaned against the wind. Above the water birds were flying, screaming as they flew. And within the room was the smell of salt and sand.
    â€œBetter?” asked the House.
    â€œYes,” said Blake, “much better. Thank you very much.”
    He sat entranced, staring out upon the scene. It was, he told himself, as if he sat upon the beach.
    â€œWe put in the sound and smell,” said the House. “We can add the wind as well.”
    â€œNo,” said Blake. “This is quite enough.”
    The waves came thundering in and the birds flew crying over them and the great black clouds were rolling up the sky. Was there anything, he wondered, that the House could not reproduce upon that wall? Thousands of combinations, the House had said. A man could sit here and stare out upon any scene he wished.
    A house, he thought. What was a house? How had it evolved?
    First, in mankind’s dim beginning, no more than a shelter to shield a man against the wind and rain, a place in which to huddle, a place for one to hide. And that, basically, still might be its definition, but now a man did more than hide and huddle; a house was a place to live. Perhaps the day might come, in some future time, when a man no more would leave his house, but live out his life inside it, never venturing out of doors, with no need or urge to venture.
    That day, he told himself, might be nearer than one thought. For a house no longer was a shelter merely or a simple place to live. It was a companion and a servant and within its walls was all that one might need.
    Off the living room stood the tiny room that housed the dimensino, the logical expansion and development of the TV he had known two hundred years ago. But now it was no longer something that one watched and listened to, but something one experienced. A piece of imagery, he thought, with this stretch of seacoast that lay upon the wall. Once in that room, with the set turned on, one entered into the action and the sense of the entertainment form. Not only was one surrounded and caught up by the sound, the smell, the taste, the temperature, the feel of what was going on, but in some subtle way became a sympathetic and an understanding part of the action and emotion that the room portrayed.
    And opposite the dimensino, in a corner of the living area, was the library that contained within the simplicity of its electronic being all the literature that still survived from man’s long history. Here one could dial and select all the extant thoughts and hopes of every human being who had ever put down