Without recruits from outside, Fishhook itself would falter in another hundred years, come to a dead stop within still another hundred. For the parries on the other planets would recruit from Fishhook even as they winnowed through the world to rescue their own kind.
But it wouldn’t matter in another hundred years, for the human race would then be safe on the other planets, building the kind of life and the kind of culture they’d been denied upon the Earth.
He started to move across the square, heading toward the bluffs. For he must be out of town, or nearly out of town, before the cars came in.
And he was, he knew, on a lonely path once more. But not so lonely now, for now he had a purpose. A purpose, he told himself with a sudden flickering of pride, he had hewn out himself.
He straightened his shoulders against the chillness of the wind and moved a bit more briskly. For there was work to do. A lot of work to do.
Something moved in the shadow of the trees off to the left, and Blaine, catching the movement with one corner of his mind, wheeled swiftly.
The movement came toward him, slowly, just a bit uncertainly.
“Shep?”
“Anita!” he cried. “You little fool! Anita!”
She came running from the darkness and was in his arms.
“I wouldn’t go,” she said. “I wouldn’t go without you. I knew you would come back.”
He crushed her to him and bent to kiss her and there was nothing in the world, nothing in the universe, but the two of them. There was blood and lilacs and the shining star and the wind upon the hilltop and the two of them and that was all there was.
Except the screaming of the cars as they came tearing down the road.
Blaine jerked away from her. “Run!” he cried. “You must, Anita!”
“Like the wind,” she said.
They ran.
“Up the bluff,” she said. “There’s a car up there. I took it up as soon as it got dark.”
Halfway up the bluff they stopped and looked back.
The first flames were beginning to run in the huddled blackness of the village, and screams of futile rage came drifting up the slope. Gunfire rattled hollowly, torn by the wind.
“They’re shooting at shadows,” said Anita. “There is nothing down there. Not even dogs or cats. The kids took them along.”
But in many other villages, thought Blaine, in many other places, there would be more than shadows. There would be fire and gunsmoke and the knotted rope and the bloody knife. And there might be as well the pattering of rapid feet and the dark shape in the sky and a howling on the hills.
“Anita,” he asked, “are there really werewolves?”
“Yes,” she told him. “Your werewolves are down there.”
And that was right, he thought. The darkness of the mind, the bleakness of the thought, the shallowness of purpose. These were the werewolves of the world.
The two of them turned their backs upon the village and headed up the slope.
Behind them the flames of hate grew taller, hotter. But ahead, above the bluff top, the distant stars glowed with certain promise.