An Android Dog's Tale Page 6

  “For a dog, that’s a terribly human sentiment.”

  “I’m not a dog.”

  “You’re not a human, either.”

  “No, I’m a mechanical simulacrum of a dog. That doesn’t mean I’m heartless.”

  “Technically, it does.”

  “You’re being intentionally obtuse. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do. You’ve grown fond of the primitives here, and you’re letting that affect your better judgment. You have to remember that these are primitives. When the corporation found their ancestors, they were foraging a meager existence from wild plants and picking the leftover carcasses abandoned by better predators. They probably still are, if they’re not extinct by now. The people here are sentient, but they’re not much different from their sheep. Don’t make them out to be more than they are.”

  “They’re—,” MO-126 began to protest. He felt he should defend the humans, realizing that this might be due to the canine basis of his programming. It hardly mattered where the feeling came from. It was part of who and what he was.

  “They’re employees of the Galactic Organic Development Corporation, and so are we,” Tork said. “They can perform their jobs better by living simple lives and holding simple beliefs, and we can perform our jobs better by helping them do so.”

  “All right,” the android dog said. “But I’m still bringing back the sheep. I’ll be there with them sometime tomorrow. Make sure to give Galinda some food and water.”

  ~*~

  The next morning, he waited patiently while the lambs nursed and the larger sheep drank from the stream and nibbled tender branches. When they seemed adequately prepared to begin their trek back to the village, MO-126 approached them from the opposite direction he needed them to go.

  The old wether raised its wooly head, turning it to one side and then the other to allow both of its widely spaced eyes to get a good look at the unfamiliar dog. MO-126 stared back at it, trying to look authoritative and determined. He could not be sure if the sheep noticed or what it meant to them if they did. He observed dogs herding sheep before, and different dogs apparently used different techniques. Some barked and nipped at the sheep’s heels, and others seemed to push them from a distance and stop and glare at them if they went the wrong way. He would try the last method first. It suited his personality better.

  He took a step toward the wether, but it did not budge. Instead, it lowered its head and stomped its front feet as if it planned to butt him. He suspected the demonstration was just for show. Sheep, as a rule, were more sheepish. This old male might have delusions about being a mountain goat or harbor other wooly ideas.

  MO-126 moved back and rethought his herding strategy. If he could just get this large one moving, the others were sure to follow. Apparently, subtlety would not work, so he moved farther back to give him space for a good start. Then, he turned and raced toward the wether, barking as he came. This time, the male sheep reacted more the way sheep should. It ran, and the others ran with it. Now he simply needed to make sure they stayed together and went the right way.

  Once the sheep were moving, herding them came to him almost intuitively. The instinct must have been buried somewhere in his canine programming. He gauged his speed, direction, and distance from the flock to direct them the way he needed them to go. It required no more barking.

  Confident of his continued progress, he made another call to his partner. “I’ll be there in a couple hours, probably less. How are things at the village?”

  “Things change little in these places from one century to the next, so it’s unlikely much could happen in a day,” was the trader’s accurate, albeit somewhat sarcastic reply.

  “I meant about Galinda.”

  “She’s still here.”

  “Did you remember to feed her?”

  “I slipped her some bread, cheese, and water last night after everyone else was asleep. I almost had to force her to take it. She said she needed to chase out her demon. Trust me; getting involved in this is not a good idea.”

  “We’re not getting involved. We’re just helping out. Once they get their sheep back, they’ll all realize it was a mistake and everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that. We’re dealing with primitive minds here.”

  “Maybe, but they all can’t be insane.”

  “Sanity is a culturally relative term,” the trader claimed. “When you get here, just keep the sheep away from the rest of the villagers’ flocks, if you can.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a precaution. I’ve been working with these primitives a bit longer than you have, and I think things might get complicated.”

  “You haven’t been working with them that much longer, just a few centuries,” MO-126 protested.

  “I’ve also worked more closely with them. I don’t think this is going to turn out as neatly as you expect.”

  “All right. I think you’re being overly pessimistic, but I’ll try to keep them separated. It shouldn’t be too hard. I’m getting the hang of this sheepdog job. I’ll call again when I get there.”

  MO-126 closed the link. He did not understand why the trade android expected trouble. Everything was quite simple. The villagers thought the sheep were abducted by demons, but when the sheep returned, the primitives would realize they were mistaken. Obviously, the sheep just wandered off, and the trader’s heroic dog found them and brought them back safe and sound. Mystery solved. Case closed. He would get a grateful pat on the head, and everyone would go home happy.

  ~*~

  About an hour and half later, he saw sheep grazing on the next hill. He raced around to the front of his tiny flock and managed, with some difficulty, to stop them. They must have sensed the other sheep and wished to rejoin them because they kept trying to continue walking in that direction.

  “I’m here,” he sent to Tork. “I’ve got the sheep less than half a kilometer east of the village. I think they want to come home now.”

  “Not yet. Stay there. I need you to make some kind of noise that the primitives here in the village can hear. Bark or howl or something. Try to make it distinctive so I can tell them I recognize the call as meaning you need me to come to you.”

  “It seems unnecessarily complicated, but I’m sure you have a good reason for this. One emergency dog signal coming up.”

  He thought for a moment, cleared his throat, and yelled, “Ruff, ruff, ruff, howlllllllllll.”

  Unexpectedly, the villagers’ dogs responded. Soon, howling came from several different spots in and around the village. The cacophony made him feel like the leader of the pack. He enjoyed it, so he did it again. “Ruff, ruff, howlllllll!”

  “That’s enough. You can stop now. We’re coming,” the trade android signaled.

  “Are you sure? How about a few more just so they don’t suspect I know you heard me?”

  He raised his head and yelled, “Ruff. Ruff. Hooowwwllllll!” The harmonizing from the village dogs grew louder. The sheep seemed unappreciative and largely uninterested, although the large male with them tried to baa along. It lost the tune quickly and went back to grazing.

  He found the canine chorus oddly appealing. It did not have a beat or a melody, but there was a simple, basic beauty to it, a kind of an a cappella atonal symphony. He did not know if he was the composer, or the conductor, or just one of the instruments. Probably all and none of those labels applied in one way or another, and he closed his eyes to get in touch with his inner dog.

  A distinctively bipedal induced rustle in the grass drew his attention. He opened his eyes and saw Tork. With him were the village headman, Gault, and his sister, Ryenne.

  “Woof,” MO-126 said by way of a greeting.

  “It appears as if my dog has found your wayward sheep, Gault,” Tork said to the headman.

  “I see that,” said the smiling village leader. “I’m relieved and very pleased.”

  MO-126 wagged his tail, expecting an appreciative pat
on the head at any moment.

  “No, you’re not,” said his sister.

  The android dog’s tail froze mid-wag.

  “I’m not?” Gault asked. His brow furled in bemusement.

  “No. You’re not.” She eyed the sheep suspiciously and then cast an accusatory gaze upon MO-126.

  “I know the gods speak to you, Ryenne, but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about this,” Gault said. “These are good sheep, and they have three healthy lambs with them. I am quite happy to have them.” As well he should be. In a society in which money did not exist, sheep represented wealth.

  “No. You’re not,” she said again. “You should be afraid. You should be very afraid.”

  “Of three sheep and three new lambs?” the headman asked.

  “They’re not lambs,” she said ominously.

  “Of course they’re lambs, Ryenne,” Gault said. “Look at them. They’re small; they’re wooly; they each have four legs, and they’re sucking on sheep teats. That’s pretty much the definition of lambs.”

  The holy woman shook her head in denial. “They only look like lambs. You’re forgetting Mov’s chicken.”

  The village headman cocked his head with bemusement, but he apparently spotted the direction of her thoughts because he soon caught her meaning. He knew her all her life and must have witnessed many of her twisted journeys into the lands of invisible nightmares and bizarre imaginings. He asked for confirmation anyway.

  “You’re saying those lambs are demons?”

  “Of course they’re demons!” She rolled her eyes with exasperation at the stupidity of her older brother. “The ewes were possessed before they gave birth, so the demons were spawned in the unborn lambs, just like in Mov’s chicken. These are stronger creatures—strong enough to carry a demon, so they survived. We need to kill them all, now, and then burn them before they can carry their demonic seed to others.”

  “She’s bat-crap crazy,” MO-126 said silently to his partner.

  “Well, she is especially imaginative,” the android trader replied. “From her perspective, I’m sure it all seems quite reasonable.”

  “Her perspective is from a high mountain with too little oxygen in mystical la-la land.”

  “You’re being unreasonably judgmental. She’s a primitive.”

  “She’s still crazy,” the artificial dog said.

  “Oddly enough, I think her brother is considering that possibility, too.”

  The trader’s comment may have been prompted by the fact that Gault just told her that she was being unreasonable. Three sheep and three new lambs were not things to be dispensed with needlessly.

  “Better these six than all our flock,” she told him.

  “But how can we know for sure?” Gault protested. “They don’t appear possessed to me.”

  “I already know for sure, Gault. The gods speak to me, remember?”

  “Well, yes. But how can I know for sure?”

  “Don’t be stupid. You can know because I told you.”

  Whereas this might have been sufficient explanation for him to allow an old woman to be beaten and starved, quite possibly to death, it did not provide a strong enough reason to sacrifice six sheep. He cautiously approached the small flock MO-126 continued to watch over. The three adult sheep glanced at the village headman, perhaps recognizing him as their owner. The lambs stayed by their mothers, completely failing to do anything overtly demonic.

  “They look like normal lambs to me, Ryenne,” Gault called back to his sister. She did not accompany him to examine the demon animals.

  “That’s what they want you to think,” she said from a safe distance. “I can feel the evil in them from here.”

  Gault reached out to pet one of the lambs. Its mother let him. The lamb bleated, “Maaa,” and stuck out its tongue. It was not forked. There were no visible fangs. It did not vomit pea soup or twist its head around. It did have strange, horizontal pupils, but all sheep had those.

  “I think this one is all right,” the village headman said. He examined the other two and then the adult sheep. “I think they’re all fine. Your demons must have left.”

  “They’re not my demons! They’re here because of Galinda. And how would you know, anyway? You’ve never been able to hear the voices or see the visions. I can feel the demons in them, I tell you. They’re there. Get away from them before they call one into you, too!”

  The android dog cocked his head, desperately trying to see things from her perspective, and failing. Dogs, as a rule, have less imagination than humans do, and their manufactured likenesses shared this trait. They just saw things that were really there and did not feel compelled to invent stories to explain them. In this case, he felt both of the humans were wrong. They were Ryenne’s demons, and they were still alive and well. They just were not what or where they thought they were.

  The headman took a step back at her warning and then looked at his sister, and then at his sheep, and then at his sister again. MO-126 did not know the village headman well, but he seemed a pragmatic sort. His analytical expression made the android dog suspect that he was mentally comparing the relative of value of six healthy sheep to that of one deranged woman.

  Gault approached the sheep again and examined them more thoroughly, despite his sister’s continued cautions. If Tork understood the primitives’ worldview as well as he implied, Ryenne’s inner visions would be as real to Gault as the images his own eyes revealed. Possibly better because he only saw the surface of things while she saw the spirits beneath. This added to the fact that the sheep were just sheep and she was family led MO-126 to suspect that both the sheep and the old woman back in the village would not live much longer.

  The headman reached his decision. “The sheep are fine, Ryenne. They’re coming back with us.”

  On the other hand, sheep are valuable, and once dead, they stay dead. There remained some chance his sister would come to her senses.

  “Oh, no. Now the demons have you, too,” she whimpered. She turned to Master Trader Tork and clutched the sleeve of his tunic. “You must stop him,” she pleaded.

  The trade android patted her shoulder benignly the way a nursery android might comfort a small child. “Why?” he asked.

  She searched his artificial eyes, which gazed back at her with apparent innocence. A look of confusion froze on her face until he smiled at her.

  She screamed and snatched the obsidian dagger he wore at his hip. “You, too!” she yelled, pushing away and holding the sharp, black point toward him.

  “Calm down, Ryenne,” her brother called. “There is no need for this.”

  She swiveled and pointed the dagger toward her brother. “No. Stay away!”

  He slowed but continued to approach. The sheep followed him.

  MO-126 growled softly, fearing she might try to stab her brother. His reaction ultimately resulted from routines embedded deep in his firmware, but it signaled a legitimate warning nonetheless.

  She shifted her attention briefly to the threatening dog. Her eyes grew ever wider as she switched her focus from him, to her brother, to the trader, and then to the sheep. She screamed again, turned, and ran toward the village.

  ~*~

  “I’m going to run ahead and make sure she doesn’t do something hasty,” MO-126 told his partner.

  Leaving Tork and Gault to lead the sheep back toward the village, he raced past Ryenne. She ran as if demons were chasing her, which she undoubtedly believed to be the case. The artificial dog kept his distance, circling well around her, and reached the spot where the old woman was tied ahead of her.

  Galinda was muttering to herself when he arrived, sitting in her own filth and heedless of the stench.

  He turned to face the approaching mad woman not tied to a pole.

  Ryenne waved the dagger dangerously. “Be gone, Demon! I command it!”

  Galinda lifted her graying head at the sound of Ryenne’s voice. She raised her arms as much as the rope would allow and echoed the hol
y woman’s words. “Be gone, Demon!” she croaked.

  This gave MO-126 an idea. Galinda did not know that Ryenne was addressing him or, more specifically, the demon she believed resided in him. The old woman apparently thought the village’s speaker to the gods was trying to cast out the evil spirit in her by scaring it with the knife. This might allow for a better solution than any the canine android imagined possible only a minute ago.

  He charged toward Ryenne. She abruptly backed away, almost tripping in the loose dirt. Before she could regain her footing, he turned and lunged at Galinda, snapping and growling a finger’s width from her tortured face. He could tell he scared her because of the shriek and the puddle.

  His behavior apparently confused Ryenne because she froze, staring at him, the knife held loose and forgotten in her hand.

  Come on, psycho lady, he thought. Don’t start being sane now. He turned and growled again at the woman tied to the stake. She cowered, drawing in her scraped and wrinkled knees beneath the smeared tunic.

  Ryenne ventured closer, again waving the knife, this time far less certainly. MO-126 dodged and snapped at both women in rapid succession. They shied away, Ryenne by retreating a few steps and Galinda by moving to the opposite side of her pole.

  “Be gone, Demon,” Galinda choked out. MO-126 hoped she would say that again. Ryenne was being less accommodating, but he could still make this work.

  “I hope you’re nearby, Trader. I need you,” he broadcasted.

  “I can hear you. What are you doing?”

  “I’m casting out demons. When you get here, try getting the villagers to chant, ‘Be gone, Demon.’”

  “What?”

  “Just do it, and when things calm down, tell Ryenne what a good job she did.”

  “What are you talking about?”