The Dog Said Bow-Wow (2 page)

MS:
Both. Neither. Hell, I don’t know.

CR:
A
S
charmingly evasive as ever, Swanwick. As silent and cunning as Joyce; as elusive as Borges; as enigmatic as Calvino; as elliptical as Lafferty; and as ironic as P. K. Dick himself. Thank you for your work, and especially for your comments, which have been…

MS:
You’re welcome.

CR:
Please don’t interrupt.

MS:
Sorry.

CR:
…most informative.

“HELLO,” SAID THE STICK
.

The soldier stopped, and looked around. He did not touch the hilt of his sword, but he adjusted his stance so he could reach it quickly, if need be. But there was nothing to be seen. The moors stretched flat and empty for miles about. “Who said that?”

“I did. Down here.”

“Ah. I see.” The soldier poked gingerly at the stick with his foot. “Some sort of radio device, eh? I’ve heard of such. Where are you speaking from?”

“I’m right here. The stick. I’m from off-planet. They can make things like me there.”

“Can they, now? Well that’s interesting, I suppose.”

“Pick me up,” said the stick. “Take me with you.”

“Why?”

“Because I make an excellent weapon.”

“No, I mean what’s in it for you?”

The stick paused. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Okay, here’s the deal. I’m a symbiotic mechanism. I was designed to be totally helpless without a human partner. Pick me up, throw an acorn in the air, take a swing at it, and I can shift my weight so you hit it a country mile. Leave me here and I can’t budge an inch.”

“Why would they build you like that?”

“So I’d be a good and faithful tool. And I will. I’ll be the best quarter-staff you ever had. Try me and see.”

“How do I know you won’t take over my brain?” the soldier asked suspiciously. “I’ve heard off-world wizards can make devices that do things like that.”

“They’re called technicians, not wizards. And that sort of technology is strictly prohibited on planetary surfaces. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Even so…. It’s nothing I’d want to chance.”

The stick sighed. “Tell me something. What’s your rank? Are you a general? A field commander?”

“Tramping alone across the moors like this? Naw, I’m just a gallow-glass — a mercenary and a foot soldier.”

“Then what have you got to lose?”

The soldier laughed aloud. He bent to pick up the stick. Then he put it down again. Then he picked it up.

“See?”

“Well, I don’t mind telling you that takes a weight off my mind.”

“I could use a change of scenery. Let’s go. We can talk along the way.”

The soldier resumed his stroll down the dirt track. He swung the stick lightly back and forth before him, admiring how it lopped off the heads of thistles, while deftly sidestepping the sedge-roses. “So you’re off to join the Iron Duke in his siege of Port Morningstar, are you?” the stick remarked conversationally.

“How’d you know that?”

“Oh, one hears things, being a stick. Fly on the wall, and all that.”

“It’s an unfamiliar figure of speech, but I catch your meaning. Who do you think’s going to win? The Iron Duke or the Council of Seven?”

“It’s a close thing, by all accounts. But the Iron Duke has the advantage of numbers. That always counts for something. If I had to bet money, I’d say you chose employers well.”

“That’s good. I like being on the winning side. Less chance of dying, for one thing.”

They’d progressed several miles across the moors when the sun began to set. The soldier laid the stick aside and set a snare for supper. By the time he’d pitched a tent, made camp, and cut peat for a fire, he’d caught a rabbit. He roasted it slow and, because he had a fondness for drumsticks, ate all six legs first, along with three small bunyips, boiled with a pinch of salt from a tin. Like many an old campaigner, he ate in silence, giving the food his undivided attention.

“Well,” he said when he was full and in the mood for conversation again. “What were you doing out here in the middle of this godforsaken wilderness?”

The stick had been stuck into the earth on the opposite side of the campfire, so that it stood upright. “I was dropped by a soldier,” it said, “much like yourself. He was in pretty bad shape at the time. I doubt he’s still alive.”

The soldier frowned. “You’re not exactly standard gear.”

“No, I’m not. By compact, planetside wars are fought with primitive weaponry. It was found that wars were almost as environmentally destructive as the internal combustion engine. So…”

“Internal combustion engine?”

“Never mind. It’s complicated. The point I was trying to make, though, is that the technology is there, even if it’s not supposed to be used. So they cheat. Your side, the other side. Everybody cheats.”

“How so?”

“That sword of yours, for example. Take it out, let’s get a look at it.”

He drew the sword. Firelight glimmered across its surface.

“Tungsten-ceramic-titanium-alloy. Self-sharpening, never rusts. You could slam it against a granite boulder and it wouldn’t break. Am I right?”

“It’s a good blade. I couldn’t say what it was made of.”

“Trust me on this one.”

“Still…you’re a lot fancier than this old sword of mine. It can’t talk, for one thing.”

“It’s possible,” said the stick, “that the Council of Seven is, out of desperation, pushing the envelope a little, these days.”

“Now
that’s
a figure of speech I’ve neither heard before nor can comprehend.”

“It means simply that it’s likely they’re using weapons rather more sophisticated than is strictly speaking allowed by the Covenants of Warfare. There’s a lot riding on this siege. The Iron Duke has put everything he has into it. If he were defeated, then the worst the Council of Seven could expect would be sanctions and a fine. So long as they don’t use tac-nukes or self-reprogramming viruses, the powers that be won’t invoke their right to invade.”

“Tac-nukes or self-reprogamming viruses?”

“Again, it’s complicated. But I see you’re yawning. Why don’t you bank the fire and turn in? Get some sleep,” said the stick. “We can talk more in the morning.”

But in the morning, the soldier didn’t feel much like talking. He packed his gear, shouldered the stick, and set off down the road with far less vigor than he had the day before. On this, the stick did not comment.

At noon, the soldier stopped for lunch. He let his pack slip from his shoulders and leaned the stick against it. Then he rummaged within for the lef-tover rabbit, only to make a face and thrust it away from him. “Phaw!” he said. “I cannot remember when I felt so weak! I must be coming down with something.”

“Do you think so?” the stick asked.

“Aye. And I’m nauseated, and I’ve got the sweats as well.”

The soldier wiped his forehead with his hand. It came back bloody.

“
Chort!
” he swore. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Radiation poisoning, I expect. I operate off a plutonium battery.”

“It’s…you… You
knew
this would happen to me.” Unsteadily, he stood, and drew his sword. He struck at the stick with all his might. Sparks flew, but it was not damaged. Again and again he struck, until his strength was gone. His eyes filled with tears. “Oh, foul and treacherous stick, to kill a man so!”

“Is this crueler than hacking a man to death with a big knife? I don’t see how. But it’s not necessary for you to die.”

“No?”

“No. If you grab your gear and hurry, you just might make it to the Iron Duke’s camp in time. The medics there can heal you — anti-radiation treatments aren’t proscribed by the Protocols. And, to tell you the truth, you do more damage to the Iron Duke’s cause alive and using up his personnel and resources than you do neatly dead in the moorlands. Go! Now!”

With a curse, the soldier kicked the stick as hard as he could. Then he grabbed his pack and shambled off.

It was not long before he disappeared over the horizon.

A day passed.

Then another.

A young man came trotting down the dirt track. He carried a sword and a light pack. He had the look of a mercenary.

“Hello,” said the stick.

THE DOG LOOKED
like he had just stepped out of a children’s book. There must have been a hundred physical adaptations required to allow him to walk upright. The pelvis, of course, had been entirely reshaped. The feet alone would have needed dozens of changes. He had knees, and knees were tricky.

To say nothing of the neurological enhancements.

But what Darger found himself most fascinated by was the creature’s costume. His suit fit him perfectly, with a slit in the back for the tail, and — again — a hundred invisible adaptations that caused it to hang on his body in a way that looked perfectly natural.

“You must have an extraordinary tailor,” Darger said.

The dog shifted his cane from one paw to the other, so they could shake, and in the least affected manner imaginable replied, “That is a common observation, sir.”

“You’re from the States?” It was a safe assumption, given where they stood — on the docks — and that the schooner
Yankee Dreamer
had sailed up the Thames with the morning tide. Darger had seen its bubble sails over the rooftops, like so many rainbows. “Have you found lodgings yet?”

“Indeed I am, and no I have not. If you could recommend a tavern of the cleaner sort?”

“No need for that. I would be only too happy to put you up for a few days in my own rooms.” And, lowering his voice, Darger said, “I have a business proposition to put to you.”

“Then lead on, sir, and I shall follow you with a right good will.”

The dog’s name was Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux, but “Call me Sir Plus,” he said with a self-denigrating smile, and “Surplus” he was ever after.

Surplus was, as Darger had at first glance suspected and by conversation confirmed, a bit of a rogue — something more than mischievous and less than a cut-throat. A dog, in fine, after Darger’s own heart.

Over drinks in a public house, Darger displayed his box and explained his intentions for it. Surplus warily touched the intricately carved teak housing, and then drew away from it. “You outline an intriguing scheme, Master Darger —”

“Please. Call me Aubrey.”

“Aubrey, then. Yet here we have a delicate point. How shall we divide up the…ah,
spoils
of this enterprise? I hesitate to mention this, but many a promising partnership has foundered on precisely such shoals.”

Darger unscrewed the salt cellar and poured its contents onto the table. With his dagger, he drew a fine line down the middle of the heap. “I divide — you choose. Or the other way around, if you please. From self-interest, you’ll not find a grain’s difference between the two.”

“Excellent!” cried Surplus and, dropping a pinch of salt in his beer, drank to the bargain.

It was raining when they left for Buckingham Labyrinth. Darger stared out the carriage window at the drear streets and worn buildings gliding by and sighed. “Poor, weary old London! History is a grinding-wheel that has been applied too many a time to thy face.”

“It is also,” Surplus reminded him, “to be the making of our fortunes. Raise your eyes to the Labyrinth, sir, with its soaring towers and bright surfaces rising above these shops and flats like a crystal mountain rearing up out of a ramshackle wooden sea, and be comforted.”

“That is fine advice,” Darger agreed. “But it cannot comfort a lover of cities, nor one of a melancholic turn of mind.”

“Pah!” cried Surplus, and said no more until they arrived at their destination.

At the portal into Buckingham, the sergeant-interface strode forward as they stepped down from the carriage. He blinked at the sight of Surplus, but said only, “Papers?”

Surplus presented the man with his passport and the credentials Darger had spent the morning forging, then added with a negligent wave of his paw, “And this is my autistic.”

The sergeant-interface glanced once at Darger, and forgot about him completely. Darger had the gift, priceless to one in his profession, of a face so nondescript that once someone looked away, it disappeared from that person’s consciousness forever. “This way, sir. The officer of protocol will want to examine these himself.”

A dwarf savant was produced to lead them through the outer circle of the Labyrinth. They passed by ladies in bioluminescent gowns and gentlemen with boots and gloves cut from leathers cloned from their own skin. Both women and men were extravagantly bejeweled — for the ostentatious display of wealth was yet again in fashion — and the halls were lushly clad and pillared in marble, porphyry and jasper. Yet Darger could not help noticing how worn the carpets were, how chipped and sooted the oil lamps. His sharp eye espied the remains of an antique electrical system, and traces as well of telephone lines and fiber optic cables from an age when those technologies were yet workable.

These last he viewed with particular pleasure.

The dwarf savant stopped before a heavy black door carved over with gilt griffins, locomotives, and fleurs-de-lis. “This is a door,” he said. “The wood is ebony. Its binomial is
Diospyros ebenum
. It was harvested in Serendip. The gilding is of gold. Gold has an atomic weight of 197.2.”

He knocked on the door and opened it.

The officer of protocol was a dark-browed man of imposing mass. He did not stand for them. “I am Lord Coherence-Hamilton, and this —” he indicated the slender, clear-eyed woman who stood beside him — “is my sister, Pamela.”

Surplus bowed deeply to the Lady, who dimpled and dipped a slight curtsey in return.

The protocol officer quickly scanned the credentials. “Explain these fraudulent papers, sirrah. The Demesne of Western Vermont! Damn me if I have ever heard of such a place.”

“Then you have missed much,” Surplus said haughtily. “It is true we are a young nation, created only seventy-five years ago during the Partition of New England. But there is much of note to commend our fair land. The glorious beauty of Lake Champlain. The gene-mills of Winooski, that ancient seat of learning the
Universitas Viridis Montis
of Burlington, the Technarchaeological Institute of — “ He stopped. “We have much to be proud of, sir, and nothing of which to be ashamed.”