An Android Dog's Tale (10 page)

Still, despite their obvious disadvantages,
he saw more potential in them than his associate apparently did.
Not here, of course. Here they were part of the project, and they
would continue to enjoy the simple, idyllic lives the corporation
arranged for them. Back on their home planet, they might become
more. The odds were against them, but they might even join the
Galactic Federation someday, send out ships of their own, and maybe
even visit their distant cousins on this or other Corporation
planets. He found himself hoping they would, and he hoped he would
still be alive to see it. He might be. Provided he got proper
maintenance and barring some unfortunate accident such as being
pulled apart and incinerated by angry villagers, he enjoyed an
indefinite lifespan.

“
Stop daydreaming,
” Tork said.
“
You’ve gone too far ahead again.
”

MO-126 stopped at the top of a hill and
waited for Tork and the gond to catch up. “
Sorry. I was just
thinking about the future.
”

“
Well, mine is to catch a transport out
of here. What about you? How much longer do you plan to
stay?
”

“
I don’t know,
” the android dog
said.

“
Don’t you ever want to leave this
backward farming project?
”

“
Not especially. What can I say? I’m a
dog. We’re not known for our ambition.
”

Tork laughed. “
Well, it’s up to you. I’m
going to see if I can find something a bit more
satisfying.
”

MO-126 could not honestly say he found his
job satisfying, but he sometimes found other things to enjoy about
working here. He knew it made no real difference, but helping the
old woman meant something to him.

1,336 Years Later

(Galactic Standard Year 231010)

(Project Year 7457)

In which curiosity is discouraged.

M
O-126 sat quietly
in the dirt while his new partner, TI-4905, or Tam to the humans,
discussed trade with the village headman, a human male by the name
of Ostlark. The top of the primitive’s head barely reached the
trade android’s eyes. Most of the people in this area were short.
This was partly due to the genetic line seeded here in the early
years of the project, but also because of the vagaries of
evolutionary biology. The PM restricted the migration of
primitives, which effectively created genetically isolated
populations. Given enough time, distinct races of humanity might
emerge on different parts of the planet.

The android dog held a special fondness for
the village known in Corporation files as Semiautonomous Production
Cell 42-A. It provided his introduction to humanity. The people
living here now were their latest descendants. The primitives
called the place something that essentially meant ‘home,’ as did
their parents and their parents’ parents back through the
generations. Those residing in similar villages did much the
same.

The village of today differed from the one
he visited three thousand years ago, but it was in the same
geographic location and superficially appeared much the same. Both
the buildings and the people he originally saw here were long
decayed, replaced, and those replacements replaced many times since
then.

The dull thud of stone axes chopping wood
provided a backdrop for the trader’s conversation with the human.
They stood at the edge of a cluster of round houses whose designs
varied little from their architectural predecessors. Nothing ever
changed much. Nothing was supposed to. The villagers busied
themselves much as their ancestors did a few millennia ago. Two
people worked at a pit to burn the bristles from a recently
slaughtered pig; others sat in a circle winnowing grain; two more
repaired a building’s wall. One of them mixed fresh daub made of
mud, clay, dung, hair, and straw with his feet. The other scooped
his hands into the mess and flung it into the woven wattle that
provided a framework. It all remained quite primitive, just as the
corporation required. MO-126 captured some images for the
archives.

A loud rumble and then a crack of
splintering wood interrupted the trader’s conversation with Ostlark
as a tree swayed and then crashed not far outside the village.

“What are your people so busy at?” the trade
android asked the village leader.

Ostlark smiled. “We’re going to make a
better main house,” he said in reply to the trader’s question. “A
long one made of logs, stronger, warmer in the winter. It was my
son Omack’s idea. He’s a smart boy.”

The trade android lifted a skeptical
eyebrow. “Something new, huh? Well, I’m sure you know what you’re
doing,” he said with the clear implication of the opposite. “For
now, I’ve brought fine things I know you’ll want to trade some of
your harvest for.” He proceeded toward the two gonds they brought
with them. Both dragged crude sledges packed with trade goods.

“
MO-126,
” he transmitted. “
Go see
what you can discover, especially about their new longhouse and the
young primitive that came up with the idea.
”

“Woof,” the android dog said aloud. Tam led
their small team even though his canine partner was over a thousand
years older and therefore possessed that much more field
experience. MO-126 did not resent this, exactly. It was simply how
things were. The trade androids always led trade missions, and
humanoid androids of all types outranked those of different
morphologies, at least unofficially. They were no more intelligent
than those who resembled other animals, or even those who were
clearly something else entirely, but as they dealt most directly
with the worker species on this project, they held a special
status.

Chickens scratching in the dirt scattered
before the android dog, some returning foul fowl looks for being
disturbed, even if ever so slightly. Children chased one another in
play and a puppy followed noisily behind. A larger dog approached
MO-126 for olfactory introductions, and he responded as canine
etiquette required. Everything here appeared normal and undoubtedly
much the same as events currently occurring in hundreds of similar
villages across the planet.

Guided by the continuing sounds of chopping,
the android dog passed the last of the clustered huts and soon
found the source of the noise. A score of people and two gonds
worked together to fell and trim trees. Several stately old pines
lay on the ground having their limbs hacked away. Another would
soon share their fate. A wisp of a boy climbed down from the next
tree to be felled after having secured a stout rope about
three-fourths of the way to the top. When he reached the bottom,
two men resumed hacking at the trunk while others looped the rope
around another tree and harnessed the end of it to a gond.

It was quite clever. They used the rope
around the other tree and the gond to change the direction of the
force needed to topple the pine and make it fall where they wanted.
Another gond dragged an already trimmed trunk back toward the
village, and MO-126 followed it to the site where the new longhouse
was being constructed. There, other primitives used ropes in an
entirely different way—to measure and layout the position of the
walls. He found their inventiveness impressive. No one taught them
how to do this. That would have been contrary to Corporation rules.
They figured it out themselves.

“Utrek, bring me the square thing,” one of
the young men at the building site shouted.

“It’s by your feet, Omack,” another young
man, apparently Utrek, responded. He was noticeably younger than
the one who first spoke, probably no more than fourteen years
old.

“Oh, right. Got it,” Omack said. He
retrieved the square thing, a single piece of carved wood about
half a meter long on each side, and used it to align the rope
markings for one corner of the new building.

“He’s going to want us to dig the hole for
the corner post,” Utrek said softly to a boy about his own age
standing next to him. MO-126 heard him clearly, although Omack
could not have.

“Do you think we should disappear before he
thinks of it?” Utrek’s companion said.

“No. We’d just get in trouble. Let’s find a
couple of sharp digging sticks.”

They drifted to a spot where several simple
tools rested on or against a wooden bench.

“It’s your fault,” Utrek’s friend said to
him. “You should never have told him about your longhouse
idea.”

“I didn’t think he’d actually want to build
one,” Utrek said defensively. “He had me throwing daub when we were
fixing one of the houses, and I just said they would probably be
better if we made them out of logs. I wasn’t suggesting anything,
really. I was just sick of throwing daub. The stuff stinks.”

“Well, it’s got poop in it. It’s supposed to
stink.” The lad tentatively selected a stick, examined its
sharpened end, and rejected it.

“Yeah, but logs don’t, and that’s all I was
really thinking at the time,” Utrek explained. “But he said I was
stupid because logs don’t bend to get the round shape you need for
a house, and I said, so don’t make it round. Then he told me I was
stupid again because houses have to be round.”

“So, what did you say?”

“Nothing. Not then, anyway, but I started
thinking about it, and I didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t make
a house out of nice, long logs, so I told him that the next
day.”

“Like I said, this is your fault.”

“Well, yeah, I guess. Ostlark thinks it’s
Omack’s idea, and I’m not about to tell him different.”

“Why? He likes it. That’s why we’re building
this.”

The young men gathered their chosen tools
and turned to leave.

“He likes it being Omack’s idea. He wouldn’t
like it if it were mine,” Utrek said as they ambled back toward the
construction site.

“So, tell him, and then we won’t have to do
this.”

“He wouldn’t believe me. He’d think I’m just
causing trouble again.”

“You think he’s still mad at you about
getting lost last week?”

“I wasn’t lost,” Utrek said. “I was
exploring. There’s a difference.”

“Did you know where you where?”

“Of course not. If I did, it wouldn’t be
exploring.”

“Then you were lost. You’re just lucky you
found your way back before the wild dogs or the demons got
you.”

“I wasn’t gone that long, and I didn’t go
that far.”

“You were out all night. That’s dangerous.
When the sun goes down, the demons rise up. Everyone knows
that.”

“I didn’t see any.”

“You were lucky.”

“Maybe, but the Master Traders travel
between the villages, and nothing seems to bother them. They must
be out after dark a lot.”

“I bet half of them get eaten, too,” Utrek’s
friend postulated. “Besides, everyone says they have some kind of
magic.”

Just then, the expected call from Omack
came, and the two boys went to dig a hole.

~*~

MO-126 watched them for a while, loosening
the dirt with their sticks and then scooping it out with their
hands, but their conversation seemed to have come to an end when
their physical labors began. He hoped to hear more about what they
thought about the traders. He knew that some primitives believed
the traders possessed magic, which simply meant that they believed
the traders could do something they could not and that they could
not explain how they did it. In this case, the inexplicable ability
involved traveling beyond and between villages. Most humans never
went more than half a day’s journey from the place of their birth
in their lifetime, and the corporation encouraged this. It made it
easier to prevent the spread of new ideas, among other things.
Communication between different human populations could lead to
several different developments that could make the project
manager’s job much more difficult.

He left the two boys to their digging and
made his way toward the river. He saw nothing out of the ordinary
there and wandered around the rest of the village until Tam called
to let him know he was ready to leave. One advantage of being a dog
was that no one expected him to help load or unload trade goods.
Without proper hands, he could be of little help in any event.

“
What did you find out,
” Tam asked
him.

“
They’re building a longhouse,
” the
android dog replied, “
just as the headman told you. It wasn’t
his son’s idea originally, not that I suppose it matters.
”

“
Anything to be concerned about?
”

“
Some clever use of ropes, but nothing
suggesting any real appreciation for geometry, if that’s what you
mean. I didn’t see any clear sign of technology-development or
scientific-discover faults.
”

“
Good.
”

The humanoid android made one last check of
the pack animals, which were now loaded with grain, vegetables, and
a few primitive bits of artwork. MO-126 turned at the sound of
approaching bare feet slapping the dirt. Utrek, the young man he
noticed earlier, approached them at a run, his hands still covered
in dirt from his labors on the longhouse.

“Master Trader,” he said, stopping before
Tam. “I want to come with you. I want to join the Traders.”

The trade android eyed the young man with
bemusement. Such requests, usually from teenage humans of an
adventurous of foolhardy nature, were not unprecedented, but they
did not occur often.

“This is not possible. One must be born a
Master Trader,” Tam said, giving the prescribed reply for dealing
with the subject.

“Why?” the boy asked.

The question seemed to catch the trader off
guard, and he hesitated. Primitives were not supposed to ask why,
and few ever did.