An Android Dog's Tale (6 page)

The headman and the trader continued to talk
while the android dog approached the bound woman. He sniffed and
listened. A sound of chuckling and a scrap of conversation came
from two young men leaning against a nearby building. They were
discussing if MO-126 would pee on her. Both seemed to want him to.
He was going to disappoint them.

The android dog cocked an ear when he heard
the headman say “rope” and paid attention until it became clear the
village leader was simply telling the trader what items he hoped to
receive in trade.

He returned his attention to the bound
woman. Her situation confused him. She most certainly lived, but
she must have been lying here for at least a day. Judging from her
damp and soiled garment and from the condition of the ground around
her, she did not leave even to relieve herself. Why would the
villagers do this to someone?

“Get away from her, you stupid dog, or
she’ll call demons into you too!”

MO-126 lifted his head and saw a
broad-shouldered woman with autumn wheat hair and winter blue eyes.
She stood by the door of one of the stone buildings. Her hands,
balled into tight fists, rested belligerently on her wide hips, and
she scowled at him.

MO-126 searched his memory files. This was
the headman’s younger sister, Ryenne. He remembered her from the
last time they came here. She was talking to a redfruit tree at the
time, and the tree, apparently, talked to her because she nodded
and answered and patted its trunk in a consoling fashion as if she
sympathized with all of its deciduous troubles—falling leaves,
worms, ungrateful bees, or suchlike. At another time in another
place, she might be diagnosed as schizophrenic. Here and now, she
was considered holy. She was the village priestess, or whatever
term they used. It varied from village to village, but someone like
this existed in most of them. She provided their liaison to the
gods, or to the spirits, or to the Force, or to whatever other
mystical explanation the people here devised to explain the things
they could not explain. MO-126 considered her harmless enough at
the time, but now he suspected his initial assessment might require
some modification.

“Is there a problem?” Tork asked, walking
toward her.

“Of course there’s a problem,” she said in a
tone that implied the trader was both an imbecile and blind. “Isn’t
that obvious?” She unclenched a fist and pointed a finger to the
woman tied to the post. “That’s the problem, but we’re taking care
of it.”

“
What is she talking about?
” the
four-legged android sent to his two-legged companion.

“
I don’t know,
” the trade android
replied silently. “
Maybe the old woman stole something or
attacked somebody.
”

“
Ask the headman,
” MO-126 said.

“
No. We should stay out of this. It’s
none of our concern.
”

That would be the proper response according
to standard protocols, but MO-126 remained uncomfortable. Obviously
they should not directly interfere. That would be overstepping
their authority. If the situation required mitigation actions, a
team would be sent in once the Mark Seven Project Manager
determined the correct course of action. MO-126 felt that he and
Tork should at least try to find out what was going on so that they
could make a thorough report.

Apparently the headman also believed Tork
deserved an explanation because he offered one. “My sister has
discovered that Galinda has been calling forth demons.” A nod of
his head toward the disheveled old lady indicated her to be the
aforesaid Galinda.

The woman tied to the stake was either not
asleep before or their voices wakened her. She struggled into a
sitting position and raised her head. Dark bruises colored her
forehead, cheeks, and eyes, clear signs of being intentionally
beaten.

“It’s not true, Gault,” the old woman said
through cracked lips. I did not consort with demons. I don’t know
who did, but it wasn’t me.”

“Are you saying Ryenne is lying?” the
headman said accusingly.

“No. Of course not, but she must have made a
mistake in her visions because it wasn’t me.”

“The gods speak to me, and they do not lie!”
Ryenne said sharply. “You are the one who called the demons.” The
headman’s sister stepped closer to the bound woman but remained a
few steps away, as if reluctant to approach closer. MO-126 doubted
that it was solely because of the smell. She felt genuinely afraid.
“You argued with Meyan about a clay bowl, didn’t you Galinda? I
know you did because Meyan told me. And what happened to that bowl,
Galinda? What happened to it after you argued with Meyan?”

“It broke. You know that. But it was my
bowl. I let Meyan borrow it, and when I asked for it back, she
wouldn’t return it.”

“That’s not the question. The next day, it
broke; isn’t that so? They day after you argued about it, it
broke.”

“Meyan said she dropped it,” Galinda said.
“I was real mad at her because it was my best bowl.”

“Yes, you were mad at her, so you called
forth demons to make her drop the bowl to spite her, didn’t
you?”

“No, Ryenne. I don’t know who did, but it
wasn’t me. I didn’t call any demons, I swear.”

The headman’s sister ignored her claim.
“What about Mov’s chicken, Galinda. What do you know about Mov’s
demon chicken?”

“I didn’t know he owned a demon chicken,”
she said, a bemused expression further distorting her battered
face.

“He doesn’t. It died before it hatched,
thank the gods. But when they broke the egg, they saw that the dead
chick had teeth, and chickens don’t have teeth, do they,
Galinda?”

“No, Ryenne. They don’t as far as I’ve ever
seen.”

“So why did this one have teeth do you
think?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was sick or
something and that’s why it died.”

“Sick chickens don’t sprout teeth. But
demons have teeth, and anything possessed by demons before it’s
born would have teeth, don’t you think?”

“Well, I suppose. I really wouldn’t know. I
don’t know anything about demons.”

“No? Then why was one trying to reach you in
the body of chicken? Mov lives right next to you, doesn’t he? His
chicken coop is close to your hut, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t—”

“You didn’t? But you did, Galinda. You did,
even if you don’t know you did. And do you know why? I know why.
The gods told me why.”

The old woman stared at her accuser with
fearful curiosity.

Ryenne lowered her voice. “There’s a demon
in you, Galinda. It’s inside you, right there where your heart is,
keeping it warm and alive with your hate and your disrespect. It’s
found a good home in you, Galinda, and its reacting to your
desires, whether you know it or not. It likes who you like, and it
hates who you hate.”

The old woman shook her head, her eyes wide
and imploring. “But I don’t hate anyone. I just got mad at Meyan
because she wouldn’t give back my bowl.” She sounded as if she
might be trying to convince herself of this, as if she might
seriously be entertaining the idea that Ryenne was right and that
she did harbor an unknown demon.

A crowd gathered while they talked. Several
villagers nodded their heads, apparently much better able to follow
the logic of Ryenne’s argument than MO-126 could. Most of it made
little sense. He knew humans were not purely rational creatures,
but most seemed to have at least one foot in reality. Ryenne might,
at best, have a few fingers there with an extremely tenuous
grip.

“I’m not talking about Meyan, now,” the
headman’s sister said. “It came clear to me when Gault’s sheep
vanished. You had harsh words with him the day before that
happened, didn’t you?”

“He said I hadn’t carded my quota of wool,
but I’d done all I could. I wasn’t shirking. My hands were aching
the way they sometimes do, so I told him I couldn’t.”

“That’s not all you said.”

The old woman sighed heavily and lowered her
head.

“What else did you say?” Ryenne prompted
her.

“He got angry with me and said I wasn’t
doing my fair share of the village work anymore. I tried to tell
him about my hands. They get stiff, you know, and my knuckles swell
sometimes. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t care about the
troubles of an old woman with no children to help her and a husband
long dead, so I said he was a poor headman and didn’t deserve any
wool at all.”

A self-satisfied smirk crossed Ryenne’s
face. “And the next day, three of his sheep go missing. Don’t you
think that’s strange?”

“Well, a bit maybe, but the old male was an
outlier. He often strayed away from the rest, and the two pregnant
ewes could have just wandered off to find a quiet spot to have
their lambs. They do that sometimes.”

“All three of them the day after you had
harsh words with my brother? I don’t think so. The demon in you is
a powerful one. It called others of its kind to ride those sheep
and spirit them away because it felt your hatred for Gault.”

Galinda slumped even more at her post,
leaning on it for support. “I didn’t know,” she mumbled softly. “I
didn’t mean to.”

The strange interaction between the two
women just got stranger. Did Ryenne somehow convince the pathetic
old woman that she was responsible for these things? How could she
have? None of it made any sense, at least not to the android
attempting to listen attentively without appearing to, but it
seemed to make a good deal of sense to the villagers.

MO-126 increased the sensitivity of his
audio receptors in order to eavesdrop on the nearby villagers
nodding and mumbling among themselves. Their seemingly unanimous
consensus was that Ryenne’s mystical sensitivities detected a
hidden truth. The headman’s sister was undeniably a woman blessed
by the gods and the old woman was obviously possessed by an evil
demon. The android dog briefly wondered if they all suffered from a
form of mass delusion, perhaps caused by some kind of brain-eating
virus.

“What do you say, Trader?” Gault asked. “Has
my sister the right of it? You travel between villages. You must
have seen cases such as this.”

“
Tell him it’s all nonsense,
” MO-126
urged his companion. “
Tell him he has to let the old lady free.
We can find out what really happened to the lost sheep.
”

“I confess I have not,” the trade android
replied, ignoring his partner’s silent pleas. Silent to all but
him, that is. The villagers could not detect radio transmissions.
He could. To them, the very idea would seem like magic.

“Well, I suppose my sister is unique. She
has always been…” the village headman paused to find the
appropriate word and finally located one that would
do…“different.”

“
She’s always been crazy, he means,
”
MO-126 said to Tork. “
Tell him!
”

“She does seem to have a rare ability,” the
humanoid android said to the headman. “The way she linked all of
those events and came to the conclusion she did is not something
most people could do, I suspect.”

“
Well, that much is true,
” the
android dog said. “
She should swap places with Galinda. Ryenne’s
the one that’s dangerous.
”

“
Shut up, MO-126,
” the trade android
transmitted.

“True,” the headman said, unknowingly
agreeing with the artificial canine on that single point. “I know I
never would have made those connections. But now that she has,
well, I suppose it all makes sense.”

MO-126 briefly wondered if he could shock
the village leader back to reality by biting him but concluded he
could not. The headman lived in a different reality. It might not
be quite as far away as his sister’s, but in the headman’s world,
demons could live in an old woman and steal sheep. In the
android’s, people could be irrational and sheep could wander off on
their own without any supernatural assistance. The two realities
touched in some places, but they were lightyears apart in
others.

The trader surprised his furry partner when
he asked what would happen to the old woman, a question probably
prompted more by idle curiosity than by any concern for her
welfare.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Ryenne answered. “The
demon must be driven from her.”

“How will you do that?” Tork asked her.

“I’ve been giving that some thought,” she
replied. “The demon is there because it’s comfortable. We have to
make it uncomfortable. It feels what Galinda feels, so I think we
can make it want to leave her.”

Translated, that meant they would beat,
starve, and leave the old woman tied to a pole until Ryenne,
through mystical means of her own, determined it was safe to
release her.

“I see,” the trader said. “Well, I wish you
good luck with that. For now, I have some things I’m sure you
need—fish hooks, needles, rope, and some new tools. Let’s go back
to my gond and I’ll show you what I brought.”

“
Why didn’t you tell Gault his sister is
nuts?
” MO-126 said to Tork as they turned back toward their
pack animal.

“
Because we are not here to educate the
primitives. We’re here to support the project, and so are they.
Don’t let yourself be distracted from that. Their belief in demons
doesn’t harm the project; in fact, it supports it. As long as they
continue to try to understand things in ways like this, they’re not
likely to put their simple, idyllic life at risk, are they? Look
around. Clean air and water, abundant natural food, no wars…. The
people here are fortunate. They don’t need to understand any more
than what they already do. That’s good for the project, it’s good
for the corporation, and it’s good for them.
”

“
It’s not good for that old
woman.
”

“
Actually, I think she might disagree.
She thinks they’re helping her by exorcising the demon. She’ll
thank them for it.
”