An Android Dog's Tale (17 page)

A shout originated at the far end of the
crowd, which the android dog heard, but few others near him did.
They would be moving soon. The villagers near the front of the
column relayed the call to those behind them, and people began
exchanging final farewells.

“
Thanks for your help,
” Granny
Greenflower said to him.

He swished his tail once in acknowledgement.
“
All I did was report what I saw.
”

“
But not everything you heard.
”

“
The PM just needed additional data
relevant to its decision about budding this village, so that’s what
I provided. Everything else would have been irrelevant to
it.
”

“
But not to you.
”

“
No. Not to me.
”

She reached down to pat him on his furry
head.

“
So you’ll be staying here, then,
”
MO-126 said. It was not a question. He knew she would be.

“
That’s what Field Ops has instructed.
Besides, I may be able to help here. Ranex’s group will have
another nursery android assigned to them. He and Tam should be
meeting you right after you leave here.
”

“
Yeah. The one assigned to Ranex’s bunch
is a basic paternal type. He’s going as a storyteller.
”

“
This is a story they will want to
remember,
” she said, “
and you too, I think.
”

~*~

The trailing members of the group were still
in sight of the village when Tam appeared over a low hill ahead of
them. Another humanoid android accompanied him.

“Master Trader Tam, it’s good to see you,”
Ranex greeted him in all sincerity and with obvious relief.

“We were in the area when we heard you. It’s
quite a large group you have.”

“Yeah, I guess we’re not exactly easy to
miss, are we?”

“No, but it was my friend here who heard you
first.”

Tam introduced his companion, who was
shorter, stouter, and older in appearance, with long gray hair and
a full, bushy beard. It was a common look for second-generation
paternal nursery androids. This one currently went by the name of
Grandpa Fables.

“So, where are you headed?” Tam asked.

Ranex told him. Tam, of course, already
knew. MO-126 sent in his report within hours of the headman’s
speech, and, based on this new data, the Mark Seven PM reconsidered
its decision.

“What a coincidence,” Tam said to the
headman. “There is a spot I know of not much more than two week’s
travel from here that would make a perfect place for a new
settlement. I can guide you there, if you wish.”

“That would be most appreciated, Master
Trader.”

“It’s no trouble at all.”

“
It’s good that the PM kept you in the
village,
” Tam sent to his canine partner. “
Who would have
thought the primitives would risk an unsupervised large migration
attempt. That report you filed gave us enough warning to mitigate
the problem.
”

“
They can be surprising,
” MO-126
said.

“
That they can,
” said the nursery
android who accompanied Tam. “
It’s one of the things I like
about them.
”

“
You like them being unpredictable?
”
Tam said.

“
Of course. There’s never a dull moment
with humans. They are such individuals. So varied and
adaptable.
”

“
Hah! Some of them are dangerously
insane,
” Tam said.

“
You’re thinking of Movey, right?
”
MO-126 said, thinking of the way that particular individual
resolved an argument over a puppy.

“
Movey? No. Actually, I was thinking of
the madman leading this group, Ranex. He couldn’t have known we’d
be coming to guide him. He took half of his village away from
everything they knew on nothing but hope.
”

The nursery android smiled and nodded.
“
Remarkable, isn’t it? Such curious and imaginative
creatures.
”

The trade android shook his head.
“
Curious and troublesome, you mean. This premature migration
will lower the output of production unit 168-D for a generation,
and it will be another generation before the new one, 168-E, is
projected to make up the difference. We couldn’t prevent it,
though, so I volunteered to be their guide. We can’t have
primitives roaming around the countryside unsupervised.
”

They could, MO-126 thought. It might be
interesting if they did. The humans might discover things, but the
PM would never permit it. It would jeopardize the project.

The migrating humans followed their chosen
leader, guided, reluctantly, by a loyal Corporation trade android.
The trailing edge of the large group crested a hill. These people
would never again see their old village.

3,825 Years Later

(Galactic Standard Year 236055)

(Project Year 12502)

In which discoveries are made and a person
is lost.

T
he Mark Seven
Project Manager exercised some control over the weather, or at
least of the climate at a macro level, but it could not prevent
severe storms from occurring. A particularly intense one swept over
the central region of the continent the week before, bringing a
full day of heavy spring rain and high winds. Traces of its passing
remained. The river still flowed high and fast. The soggy,
grass-covered ground squished into shallow puddles where their gond
stepped, and they passed more than a few large, overturned trees
since they left the mountain entrance of Hub Terminal Ten three
days ago. But the sky was now a cloudless blue, and new trees would
soon occupy the sunny spots vacated by their unfortunate elders—or
pines, or oaks, or whatever. Unfortunately, several primitive
villages lay near the flooded river, and MO-126 and Tam made their
way to one of them to assess the impact.

They were one of four teams that formed part
of the current relief mission, which parted company soon after
leaving to proceed on to their individual assignments. Each team
consisted of one trade android and one mobile observer, and each
led a gond laden with blankets, tools, and pottery. They also
carried ointments and potions to treat minor injuries, but these
were limited to natural remedies and concoctions that the
primitives could produce themselves.

MO-126 knew they had a problem as soon as
they approached the village, but it had nothing to do with the
storm. A midden pile lay not far outside the village. What caught
his attention were the marks in the ground nearby.

“
Skids?
” Tam asked his four-legged
partner.

The android dog examined the tracks closely
and shook his head. “
No. Definitely wheels.
”

“
But there have been no reports of the
primitives here inventing the wheel.
”

“
I guess we’ll have to file one,
then,
” MO-126 said.

A few other villages had also invented the
wheel. Some used it only for toys, games, or folk art. Some
attached mystical properties to it. A few applied the idea more
pragmatically. Field Ops monitored these closely and took special
efforts to limit their population growth and migration. They did
not want the idea to spread. So far, they had been successful.

The two androids and their pack animal
entered the village, which was still busy recovering from the
massive storm. People labored like ants repairing the thatched
roofs of their stone huts, sorting through their damaged
possessions, and clearing debris. Three young men, piling old
thatch and broken rafters into a two-wheeled barrow, nodded to the
trader as they approached.

Tam eyed the wheelbarrow. “
That’s
new,
” he commented to his companion.

“
The source of the tracks,
” MO-126
said. “
The spacing matches.
”

The wheelbarrow consisted of a crude wooden
box placed over a shaft connecting two solid disks cut from a tree
trunk and held in place by pegs. Each wheel was about as wide as a
person’s palm and about half a meter in diameter.

The trader shook his head. “
Clever,
”
he said with disapproval. He shifted his attention to the three
villagers. “Good morning. Where might I find your headman?”

They paused from their labors to consider
the question. The shortest of the men scratched his beard as he
gave it some thought. All of them were shorter and stouter than
Tam. They all also sported enough facial hair to nest chickens in.
The tallest of the trio may have tried. The man certainly could
have been more fastidious about his grooming after his last meal,
unless he was saving the remaining bits of egg for later. Sometimes
MO-126 wondered what he saw that impressed him about humans.

“Well,” the short beard-scratcher said in
their local guttural language.

Tam waited for elaboration. As none seemed
to be forthcoming, he said, “Well, what?”

The villager pointed one dirty finger toward
the center of the village. “He was at the well last time I saw
him.”

“Oh. Right. Thanks,” Tam said. He turned to
leave, took one step, and then turned back.

“That’s an interesting, um, thing you have
there,” he said, pointing to the crude wheelbarrow.

“It’s just a box for rubbish,” the short,
hairy villager said. One of the others returned to work. The last
and tallest, relatively speaking, stood quietly contemplating
something stuck to his finger as if waiting for a thought to arrive
that might explain it. By all appearances, it might take a
while.

“No, I mean the things under it,” Tam
clarified.

“Those are just some of Thinkers round
things. They make the box easier to move.”

“Thinker?”

“Yeah. He makes round things.”

“And other things,” the tallest of the three
amended, wiping his finger on his sleeve.

“Yeah. And other things,” agreed the
first.

“What kind of things?” the trader said.

The villager shrugged. “Different
things.”

“What kind of different things?”

“Round things, mostly, but other things,
too. Like I said, different things. He’ll show you, if you want. He
might be with Grannit at the well.”

“Thanks.”

MO-126 watched for other anomalies as they
made their way toward the center of the village. Unlike lower lying
villages, hill villages near the mountains, like this one, used
stone for most of their buildings. This ancient and natural
building material provided no cause for concern. The ‘round thing’
innovation, however, was another matter, and the villagers here
apparently applied in a variety of ways.

As they made their way through the village,
they saw one child pulling a small wooden toy carved to resemble a
goat with wheels attached to its legs. An old woman sitting outside
one of the stone huts worked clay on a slow potter’s wheel. A rope
tied to a bucket hung over a grooved wooden pulley in the small,
circular well house near the center of the village. These guys were
really into round.

Two men near the well interrupted their
conversation as the trader approached, still leading the gond.

“Master Trader?” said the older of the two.
His beard showed patches of stony gray. The other man sported a
shorter beard, black, and a prematurely balding head.

“Tam,” Tam said, introducing himself. He did
not bother to introduce his canine companion who had answered to
several different names over the years. If asked, Tam would pick
one, but adult villagers normally ignored the trader’s dog. Younger
ones seemed content to call him their language’s equivalent of
‘doggy.’

“Grannit,” the villager said. “Headman of
Stone Home. I am pleased to see you, but why have you come? We have
nothing to trade today, I’m afraid.”

“I’ve come because of the storm,” Tam said.
“We wanted to see how you fared and to offer assistance.”

The village headman glanced at the loaded
gond before replying. “Thanks. It could have been worse. We lost a
few roofs and more than a few chickens, but our terraces weathered
the storm well. We should have close to a normal crop of potatoes
this harvest season. Our grapevines may have suffered a bit. I
expect their yield will be low this year.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Tam said. “We’ll
offer you generous trades on whatever you have to spare. We just
wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“We will be. I don’t think the gods were
aiming at us.” He offered a weak smile, which Tam returned.

“I’ve brought blankets, tools, rope, and
some other things that you may be able to use,” the trade android
said, pointing to the gond.

Grannit nodded. “Thanks. We’ll pay you back
at harvest season.”

“No need. It’s a gift.”

“Then we will offer you a gift when we can.
It is only fair.”

If the headman knew the markup the
corporation charged its customers for the things he and his people
grew, he would not be so concerned about repaying the trader’s
gift. The profit from the annual output of this one village
amounted to enough to pay for the construction of both of the
android’s visiting him.

“Come. Let’s go to the common house. At
least we can offer you a meal and some nicely aged grape juice as
thanks while we unpack your animal.” He turned to the other
villager, the one with the high forehead. “Thinker, take the
trader’s gond and see to its unloading.”

“Thinker,” Tam said to the man as he handed
him the gond’s lead. “You must be the fellow who made the round
things I saw earlier.”

“Must I?” the man said with a puzzled
expression.

“Yes. Three men working on a hut had a box
with round things under it, and one of them said you made
them.”