The Werewolf Principle

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Authors: Clifford D. Simak
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am employed at Biologics, Inc., in New York City—Manhattan.
    MR. DOTY: You head up the research department of that company, do you not?
    DR. LUKAS: I am the chief of one of the research programs.
    MR. DOTY: And this program deals with bioengineering?
    DR. LUKAS: Yes, sir, it does. At the moment we are especially concerned with the problem of developing an all-purpose agricultural animal.
    MR. DOTY: Would you please explain.
    DR. LUKAS: Gladly. Our hope is to be able to develop an animal which will provide several different types of meat, that will give milk, provide wool or hair or fur, perhaps all three. It would replace, we would hope, the many specialized animals which man has used in his animal husbandry since the Neolithic Revolution.
    SENATOR STONE: And I take it, Dr. Lukas, that you have some indications your research may result in some practical success.
    DR. LUKAS: Indeed we do. I might say that we have the basic problems licked. We actually have a herd of these animals. What we are trying for now are certain refinements. We have as our goal the development of a single animal which will replace all the other farm animals, supplying everything they now supply.
    SENATOR STONE: And in this you also have some hope of success?
    DR. LUKAS: We are very much encouraged.
    SENATOR STONE: And what do you call this animal that you have now, may I ask?
    DR. LUKAS: We have no name for it, senator. We haven’t even bothered to try to think of one.
    SENATOR STONE: It wouldn’t be a cow, would it?
    DR. LUKAS: No, not entirely. It would have some bovine aspects, naturally.
    SENATOR STONE: Nor a pig? Nor sheep?
    DR. LUKAS: No, neither of those. Not entirely, of course. But with some characteristics of both.
    SENATOR HORTON: I think that there is no need to go through these long preliminaries. What my distinguished colleague wants to ask you is whether this creature you are developing is something entirely new in the way of life—a synthetic life, let’s say—or whether it still can claim some relationship to present and natural forms?
    DR. LUKAS: That, senator, is an extremely difficult question to answer. One could say, in all truthfulness, that the present and natural forms of life have been retained and used as patterns, but that what we have is essentially a new kind of animal.
    SENATOR STONE: Thank you, sir. And I wish also to thank my fellow senator for his quick perception of the direction in which my questioning was leading. So here we have, you would say, an entirely new kind of creature, distantly associated, perhaps, with a cow, a pig, a sheep, perhaps with even other forms of life …
    DR. LUKAS: Yes, with other forms of life. There may be a limit somewhere, of course, but at the moment we do not see it. We feel we may be able to keep on drafting various forms of life, fusing them together into something viable …
    SENATOR STONE: And the further you go in this direction, the further you take this life form from its association with any present form of life?
    DR. LUKAS: Yes, I suppose you could say that. I’d have to think about it before I gave an answer.
    SENATOR STONE: Now, doctor, let me inquire into the state of the art. You can do this biological engineering with animals. Could the same thing be done with human beings?
    DR. LUKAS: Oh, yes. Certainly it could.
    SENATOR STONE: You feel certain that new types of humanity could be created in the laboratory. Perhaps many different types.
    DR. LUKAS: I have no doubt of it.
    SENATOR STONE: And once his had been done—once you had engineered a human to specific specifications, would that human breed true to the form you had created?
    DR. LUKAS: There is no question of that. The animals we have created have bred true. It should be no different with a human. It is simply a matter of altering the genetic material. That is what must be done in the first place, you understand.
    SENATOR STONE: Let us get this straight now. Suppose you did

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