An Android Dog's Tale (32 page)

MO-126 suspected humans might be different.
They were never satisfied, always curious. They seemed to have an
innate need to imagine and create new things and new ideas. He
conceded that to some this might appear to be a form of insanity,
but he admired that kind of madness. If the humans could only learn
to direct it properly, they could accomplish much. He entertained a
vague notion of somehow being able to help them, but this was more
of a desire than a plan. He quickly learned that he could do
little. His canine form limited him from interacting much with
people or influencing them in any major way. This frustrated
him.

He could not predict the future of humanity
but he found himself fascinated by it. He liked this aspect of
their nature. Humans were unpredictable, not quite random, not
chaotic, but full of surprises. He considered his own future. That,
too, remained uncertain, even though he exercised much more control
over it. He simply had not yet decided what he wanted to do with
the rest of his life—but there was something he wanted to do
now.

He wound his way down the mountain and
headed east as another night descended.

~*~

He approached the village at dawn. It was
much as he remembered it. There was still no road as such leading
to it. There were a few more buildings, but they were much the same
as those built before them. The greeting he received from the
canine welcoming committee was also familiar. He exchanged
obligatory sniffs and proceeded on toward the house he shared with
a boy half a century ago.

An elderly man sat outside sitting in a
spindle-backed rocking chair. An aged dog lay sleeping on the
ground next to him. The dog lifted its head and gave a drowsy
“Woof” before laying it back down.

“What is it, Boy?” the old man said.

“MO-126 recognized the voice immediately. It
was older, of course, but it was Kolby’s, and if the dog’s name was
actually “Boy,” it was clear his imagination for names had not
improved over the years.

Kolby caught sight of MO-126 and stared at
him a moment in disbelief.

“Laura! Come out here,” he called over his
shoulder.

“What is it, dear?” she said. She must have
mellowed some with age.

“Doesn’t he look just like Doggy?” Kolby
said, pointing. “You remember Doggy, don’t you?”

“Of course I remember Doggy, you daft old
man.”

Maybe she hadn’t mellowed all that much,
although she did ameliorate her statement with a kiss on his
cheek.

She squinted. “But my memory’s better than
my eyes. Come here, Doggy,” she said, kneeling and urging him to
approach.

MO-126 tried not to wag his tail and failed.
He did manage to restrain himself from running to her. He went to
her, but he tried to make it seem that he was uncertain about the
wisdom of it.

She scratched his ears with both hands in
more of a hug than a pet. “The spitting image,” she said.

The old man leaned down stiffly and stroked
the android dog’s head.

“I had a dog like you, once,” he said,
misty-eyed in recollection. “Best dog I ever knew.” He turned to
the old dog lying next to him. “No offense, Boy.”

The old dog seemed to take none. A wheezy
snore provided its only response.

Suddenly, Kolby gasped for air and coughed
several times. MO-126 was no healer, but his sensors were capable
of determining the man’s temperature, heart rate, and, even
estimate his blood pressure. He was not well. The years had taken
their toll.

“Is Grandpa all right, Granny,” a boy about
ten years old asked Laura.

“I always thought so,” she said, “but his
lungs probably have a different opinion. Go fetch him a cup of
water, will you, Jax?”

“Sure, Granny. Be right back.” He ran
through the door he left open a moment before.

“I’m fine,” Kolby said when he got back his
breath.

His wife offered no comment. Obviously, she
knew otherwise and that her husband did as well.

“He does look like Doggy,” Kolby said. “I
wonder if they’re related. Maybe a great, great, whatever grandson,
or something.”

“As I recall, you said Doggy never showed an
interest in…making puppies.” She smiled and winked.

“Well, maybe he was, you know, discreet
about it,” he said with a return smile that showed missing teeth
and receding gums.

“Where do you suppose he came from?” she
asked.

“Doggy or this handsome fellow?” he replied,
still petting MO-126.

“Either or both,” she said. “It just seems
odd. One day Doggy shows up out of nowhere and attaches himself to
you, and now another dog who looks like him does much the
same.”

Oh-oh, MO-126 thought. I shouldn’t have
come.

Their grandson returned with a cup of water
for Kolby. He must have heard at least some of his grandparents’
conversation.

“Can I keep him?” he said. “I know Mom and
Dad won’t mind.”

“I don’t know, Jax,” Laura said. “He might
belong to someone. Besides, I’m not the one who can say yes or no.
That’s your parents’ job.”

“So that’s a yes, right?” the boy said.

He really is cute, the android dog thought.
He looked a bit like Kolby at that age except Jax’s head and ears
were better sized for one another. MO-126 found the boy’s offer
tempting, but another cough from Kolby and Laura’s bemused
expression reminded him of two very good reasons why it was not a
good idea. One exceptional dog coming out of nowhere was simply a
lucky coincidence. Two in the same family separated by half a
century would be a mystery begging for an explanation.
Superstitious people, in their never-ending quest to provide easy
and invariably wrong answers, might provide one that would cast
suspicion not only on himself but on Kolby’s entire family. Those
who saw demons in every shadow and witches behind every door were
not common around here, but there were some, and they could be loud
and dangerous. He did not want to bring that kind of scrutiny down
on Kolby and his kin.

Also, there was the personal element. He
could do nothing to help Kolby now. Age had taken him. He would not
recover from it, and his grandson would soon suffer the same fate.
The corporation had warned the androids who worked in the field
about becoming emotionally attached to primitives, and perhaps they
were right. He knew his ability to approach this situation calmly
and rationally was impaired. The fact that the human aging process
was perfectly normal and natural mattered to him not at all at the
moment.

He backed away reluctantly. Jax moved to run
after him, but Laura stopped him.

“Let him go,” she said. “He probably just
wants to go home.”

Home, MO-126 reflected as he left the
village. Where is that, now? Where did he fit? The NASH units must
have gone through experiences like this several times. How did they
handle it? Maybe they didn’t. He might be the last Corporation
android on the planet still functioning.

For five hundred of their generations he had
been around humans. He watched them live and work for the
corporation, and he witnessed some of what they accomplished and
failed to accomplish on their own. He still felt optimistic about
their long term future, but he could do little to help them. His
canine form limited his options. If he had a partner, like in the
old days, they might be able to work out some way to be useful, but
he could not do it alone, and he knew of no others.

This was getting depressing. He needed a
vacation from his retirement.

He headed toward the mountains and the
hidden entrance of Hub Terminal Ten. Any one would do, but this was
the closest.

Another night arrived with a cloudy darkness
by the time he got there. He retuned his audio receptors for
greater sensitivity, but he heard nothing other than the rushing
river and the songs of insects and frogs. Occasionally, one of the
latter would make a snack of one of the former, but he heard
nothing to indicate there were any people nearby.

He sent the silent signal to open the
outside portal to Hub Terminal Ten. The door, which appeared to be
a natural, stone cliff face, lowered to form a bridge over the
narrow river flowing with icy water from the mountains. It was too
swift to swim and too wide to jump, for a human.

He paused to empty his fuel tank in a manner
that appeared quite natural for any normal dog. He did not intend
the act to have any philosophical meaning, but he supposed it could
be seen that way, if anyone was watching, which no one was. Another
futile gesture, then. He would be running on his backup battery
from here on.

The bridge began to lift back into place as
soon as he entered the dark, cave-like chamber. Once it sealed
behind him, a dim light came on. Other than this, the cave appeared
natural.

He sent another signal and a concealed door
in the far wall opened to a lighted corridor with floors, walls,
and ceiling made of a gray ceramic material. The outer entrances of
the hub terminals varied to suit the surrounding landscape, but
from this point, all shared the same standard layout.

His claws clicked on the textured floor and
the sound echoed in the corridor. He saw no indication that anyone
had been here in a while. The place held a certain tomblike feel,
and he felt a twinge of guilt. His failure to report the
development of a phonetic alphabet two thousand years ago may have
precipitated the end of the project, but he shook off the feeling.
He retained little affection for the corporation, and project
termination was inevitable eventually, anyway. At best, he
accelerated it by only a few centuries.

A low panel in one wall slid open and a
general-purpose maintenance robot zipped out. The squat, gray
automaton resembled a large, headless turtle on hidden rollers more
than it did any other living creature. It ignored him and began
cleaning the floor. The robots would follow their last instructions
until instructed otherwise, which, with the PM no longer
functioning, would not happen any time soon. They would probably
continue keeping the place clean and performing standard
maintenance for thousands of years to come.

He glanced at the main access panel, a large
black rectangle embedded in the wall to his left. A tiny green
light in the lower corner showed standby power available. He
expected it would be. He should have no trouble calling for a
transport pod.

He turned to do so when another idea
occurred, a sort of contingency plan just in case. He considered it
a low cost investment in an unlikely future, or perhaps more like a
message in a bottle.

He reversed direction and went toward the
corridor to his right. The three doors it held were all closed. The
far one at the end of the hall was the maintenance bay. Each of the
nineteen major hub terminals on the continent included one. He’d
gone to them for routine checkups and maintenance several times,
but this was not what he wanted now. The two nearer rooms across
the hall from one another were the storeroom for trade goods and
the equipment room in which the humanoid androids kitted up for
field missions. What he wanted should be in one or the other, and
he sent the signal for them to open.

The shelves of the storeroom were still
stocked with pottery, glass, hardware and other things the trade
androids used to offer in exchange to humans. He found sheets of
gondhide vellum and a charcoal stick in a box next to another
containing ink, canvas, and paint.

He scrawled a quick note on the vellum with
the charcoal. It would have been so much easier if he had proper
hands with thumbs, but he didn’t, so he held the sheet steady with
two paws and grasped the writing stick in his mouth. The result
wasn’t neat, but it was legible.

After a few failed attempts, he managed to
fold the vellum. He picked it up with his mouth, which was
unfortunately the best method he had. He needed just one more
thing. He doubted one would be here, but there should be some in
the main equipment warehouse.

He returned to the first room and called for
a transport pod. A musical ‘ping’ a couple minutes later announced
its arrival. One of a pair of sliding doors opposite the exit
toward the outside opened to the pod. The one waiting was the
smallest of the various models that existed. Its single seat was
designed for humanoids, but this was just a minor inconvenience of
being a four-legged creature in a two-legged world. He got in and
signaled his destination. The panel in front of him provided a time
of arrival, and the small vehicle accelerated into the main
tube.

An hour later, the transport pod door opened
to the warehouse, and service lights came on automatically. Filled
racks of various kinds of equipment stood in straight lines between
stone columns. The spare and repair parts stored here were intended
to sustain the remnants of the decommissioned project, including
those sentient androids who chose to retire in place. If the
fabrication centers still functioned, any parts used would be
replaced. MO-126 suspected they no longer did. The Mark Seven
Project Manager caused considerable damage to the project
infrastructure before it finally shutdown. The hub terminals were
intact, but he doubted many of the deeper facilities were. The fact
that the shelves were full probably meant that the maintenance
robots had not used many parts yet. Fortunately, the shelves were
well organized, and MO-126 soon located the power converter he
hoped to find here. It was not a large piece of equipment, but it
was essential. He could not be restarted without it.

His initial plan was to find a nice spot in
either a maintenance bay or even inside a packing case for long
term storage in a fabrication center, but he had one mouth and two
things to carry now. He could probably figure out something to
compensate for his lousy, thumbless design, but there was little
point. Here was as good a place as any.