An Android Dog's Tale (4 page)

In the history of the Galactic Federation,
there has only been one recorded mishap related to this policy. It
involved the krutons. The Xcuse Mining Corporation first discovered
them on a planet around a star in the Scutum-Crux spiral arm. From
all outward appearances, the krutons were a clearly sentient and
docile vegetarian species with no outward signs of sophisticated
technology. When the automated survey probes went down to the
planet, they were immediately met by a delegation of natives
wearing plant fiber togas and beatific expressions. Using what was
assumed to be some kind of radio transmission, they telepathically
announced that they were on vacation and did not wish to be
disturbed.

This was enough to send the confused survey
probes back to their ship, which sent out a call to its home base
for further instructions. Given the immense distances involved,
they received a reply forty-two years later. By this time,
Federation commercial scout ships had discovered four other planets
populated by krutons. An ancient artificial satellite orbited one
of these. It lay dormant until the survey ship approached, but as
it neared, the seemingly dead orbiter powered up and broadcast a
short and simple radio message in various languages.

“
Please be advised that we are no longer
open to unsolicited requests for contact with sentient species.
We’ve tried that, studied it, and found it has only limited
survival value. If you persist in your efforts, we will, of course,
be happy to demonstrate this point.
”

A scan of the satellite indicated a vast
array of weaponry, much of which remained largely incomprehensible
to Federation physicists but which appeared to be able to warp the
fabric of spacetime into tiny and incredibly dense knots or, more
disturbingly, undo existing knots that gave a semblance of separate
existence to matter. The Galactic Federation designated the krutons
the first, and hopefully only, post-sentient species ever
discovered and declared them off limits.

The Xcuse corporate headquarters instructed
their survey ship to deploy warning buoys.

~*~

Some of the village dogs approached MO-126
and began to sniff. He expected this. Smell is one way dogs
recognize each other. He allowed their olfactory examination and
reciprocated in kind for the sake of appearance. Some returned for
a second sniff as if confused, but none seemed to take exception to
his presence.

Encouraged at having passed their
examination, he ambled in the general direction of the river,
scattering a few chickens, ignoring a couple goats, and attempting
to observe people while trying not to appear that he was observing
them. The trader was right. It was more difficult than it
sounded.

People sat alone or in small groups sewing
leather, weaving baskets, or stringing beads of shell, bone, or
rock. Humans seemed to have adapted well to this planet, and they
appeared content, confirming what his Corporation indoctrination
files led him to expect. He clandestinely recorded a few images of
them happily constructing useful and decorative items, hoping some
of the pictures might eventually be used in corporate advertising.
This would not benefit him personally other than to provide a sense
of satisfaction for being even more useful to his makers. The
corporation did not reward their android operatives for recording
normal behavior, but it did give generous bonuses for discovering
and reporting serious scientific-discovery or
technology-development faults.

Beyond the clustered buildings, children
played a game that involved kicking a goat’s bladder stuffed with
dried grass. Some of the village dogs joined in. MO-126 watched
them for a minute but could not discern the rules, assuming there
were any. Most of the children seemed to enjoy it, laughing even
when they fell in the dirt, which they often did. A few, mostly
boys, seemed to be taking the game far more seriously. They pushed;
they shoved. He saw one bite another one who wailed and limped
away. He noted it as an example of the type of competitive
dominance behavior the species sometimes exhibited. His data files
included examples of this and other behavioral traits. Fortunately
for the primitives, the project manager could prevent such
tendencies from causing them too much harm, but it saddened him to
think what would happen to the descendants of these people when the
corporation eventually abandoned the project. It would most likely
be several thousand years until that happened, but after that, the
humans here would be left unsupervised. MO-126 found himself
saddened by the possible results. The thought made him even more
determined to see to it that the project ran as long as
possible.

A small girl, with tangled brown hair and
knees stained with dirt to a similar shade, ran to him. “Hi, doggy.
Why are you sitting here all alone?”

MO-126 responded with an involuntary wag of
his tail. His mouth opened in what passed for a doggy smile. She
wrapped her arms around him in a weak hug and then rushed off to
join the other children in joyful mayhem. The artificial canine
remained and watched them for a few minutes before moving on,
wondering why he enjoyed that.

Some adults sat on the ground nearby,
occupied with their own games. He noticed two distinct types, but
he did not pause long enough to understand either fully. One used a
wooden board with cuplike indentations and dried seeds, which two
players captured from one another. The second used small discs of
two different shades of wood on a square board marked with a grid.
Games and toys often provided the first signs of new discoveries,
but neither of these suggested any unwanted advances or
discoveries.

Nearer the river, a woman worked clay. Some
crude bowls sat on a board by her side, but her current project was
a small animal figurine with four legs. Others sat drying nearby,
including stylized representations of goats, dogs, sheep, and some
that looked like small models of extremely large women.

He recorded what he observed. Clay working
could lead to problems. The first would be the slow wheel,
essentially a platform potters could turn as they worked clay. That
could lead to more advanced types of potter’s wheels, which could
lead to spinning wheels. Those were not problems in themselves, but
they could eventually lead to axles, wagon wheels, water wheels,
and cogwheels, which certainly would be. Developments such as these
could destroy the simple lifestyle these people currently enjoyed
and, of course, eventually lead to termination of the Corporation
project here. The Galactic Organic Development Corporation
guaranteed to its customers that all products carrying its brand
were produced naturally by hand—or by pseudopod, or tentacle, or
paw, or trunk, or whatever, depending on the species. Any complex
mechanized devices used in the creation of an item would make it
unsuitable for the corporation’s exclusive market.

A black cat crossed his path, paused, and
said, “Meow?” In Cat, this meant something like, ‘Are you of any
use?’ which is a cat’s normal first reaction to most things. The
inclusion of cats in the bio matrix transfer amounted to a last
minute decision. When the first Corporation survey ship examined
the humans’ home planet, cats were small, feral predators.
Neolithic humans did not have a symbiotic relationship with them.
Unlike dogs, they were not domesticated, but the sentient survey
ship determined they would be ideal to keep down the population of
small rodents that apparently had been. Later, after carefully
reviewing its data, it concluded that mice and rats were not
actually invited guests to the caves and hovels of primitive man,
as it initially assumed, although they were sometimes a minor
source of protein.

A small boy gathered clay by the river,
using his hands and a wooden trowel to dig into a section of
steeply inclined bank, more like a dirt cliff than a beach. A woven
basket of reeds hung by its handle from the gnarled branch of a
bush clinging to life on the embankment, and he heaped handfuls of
moist, gray clay into it. He might be the son or younger brother of
the potter MO-126 noticed earlier. The android dog was not yet
adept at judging the age of humans, so he could not determine which
of these was more likely.

A rope dangled in the swift flowing river
farther along the bank. He wandered that way to take a closer look.
From the angle, it appeared to be tethered to something submerged
being tugged by the current. It must be flax. This posed no problem
in itself, but it could lead to weaving and then to mechanical
looms and, after five or ten thousand years or so, to computers, if
the humans were sufficiently clever and imaginative. He already
suspected they might be.

Humanity could be one of those creative
species with the ability to develop things independently, unlike
the comfortable conservative complacency enjoyed by the majority of
those in the Galactic Federation. Whatever capacity for innovation
these once must have possessed, they lost long ago. The few
innovations they eventually adopted now were normally originated by
others. Innovation brings risks, which content societies lack the
motivation to take. A desire for change normally presupposes a
certain amount of dissatisfaction with the status quo, or an
unhealthy level of innate curiosity. Especially creative
trail-blazing races tend to self-destruct when their curiosity and
creativity outpaces their intelligence. Those who follow them can
simply stop at the crater where the metaphorical footprints end and
consider themselves wise for doing so.

A scream quickly followed by a loud splash
came from behind him. MO-126 turned and saw the boy previously
gathering clay now flailing in the river. A long skid of loose dirt
and broken plants in the embankment showed how he got there.

Humans could swim, couldn’t they? MO-126 did
a quick search of his data files and confirmed that they did have
some limited ability to swim. The boy fell only a couple meters
from shore, so the android dog watched bemused while the young
primitive slapped his arms against the current in his effort to
reach the bank. He did not seem to be making much progress. The
water must be deeper than it looked and the current was obviously
stronger than the small human could handle. When his head went
under for the third time, something basic, something deep in the
android dog’s firmware that served as instinct, pressed a
metaphorical panic button, and MO-126 jumped in after him.

It was not a conscious decision. He could
not explain why he decided to do so. He could not recall
considering the question at all. It was as if his rational
cognitive abilities and all of the information contained in his
Corporation files were somehow temporarily bypassed or overridden
by the deep-seated canine behavior patterns in his basic
programming. Whatever the cause, he leapt into the water, almost
immediately reaching the point where the boy went down. It did not
occur to him that this was probably several times the distance a
biological dog could hope to jump.

He plunged his head in the flowing water and
saw the boy weakly attempting to reach the surface, but for every
advance he made, the water carried him farther downstream and
pushed him back under.

MO-126 possessed a design optimized to do
many things well. Swimming was not one of them, but his robustly
engineered legs beat rapidly, creating a foamy wake as he moved
with the current. The boy continued trying to fight it. This, and
the ineffable uncertainties of chance, which humans call luck,
allowed the android dog to reach the child just as he seemed to
have exhausted his meager strength. MO-126 caught the tough linen
of the boy’s tunic in his teeth and angled toward the sloping
bank.

He soon felt mud and stones beneath his
paws, and he dragged the boy to shore. The child tried to get to
his knees, coughed out some water, and then collapsed, managing to
turn so that his back was to the ground. The simulated dog
reasserted his hold on the boy’s clothing, dragged him farther from
the water, and then started barking. It felt like the right thing
to do. The child looked so…, not helpless, really, but as badly
needing help, which the android dog inexplicably felt he should
provide.

Someone must have noticed the boy’s
predicament because people already raced toward them from the
village. When they reached the riverbank, some tended to the child
while a few seemed more interested in MO-126.

“Master Trader Tork’s dog saved Margot’s
boy,” one of them said. “I never saw anything like it.”

More villagers approached him; some patted
his wet fur and others just stood by seeming to admire him. This
was not a good thing. His job as a clandestine, unobtrusive
observer specifically required that he not draw attention to
himself. Field Ops might say he was defective. They could even
disassemble him for parts. At the very least, they would subject
him to extensive diagnosis to find out what caused his rash
reaction and then reprogram him to correct the problem. The effect
would be little different from his perspective.

“
That wasn’t very doglike,
” the trade
android said.

MO-126 received the message clearly, but it
took a moment for him to locate his partner visually in the crowd.
All humans still appeared much alike to him.

He felt another human pat his head, finding
it surprisingly pleasant, but he could not let that distract him.
He needed to think of some way to justify his behavior. He just
began forming an identity and did not want to have to start
over.

“
Um, dogs save people all the time. That
was included in my basic knowledge packet,
” he said. It was,
and the information was correct. There were several well-documented
observations of such behavior.