An Android Dog's Tale
Page 19
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It took close to an hour for MO-126 to find Ranex, the other contender for village headman. The mobile observer android found his hut was empty when he arrived there to do some more clandestine observing. He suspected the man might be out trying to hustle support, but this proved not to be the case. He eventually found him in Steffins’s hut, the recently injured, club-footed young man. They sat inside playing a board game. MO-126 did his sleepy dog act and laid in the shade by the back wall.
“I’ve got you beat, Ranex. Do you want to give up now or should we play it out?” Steffin said in a tone of good-natured teasing.
“No,” Ranex said and laughed. “I know when I’m outmatched.”
Speaking of which, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out trying to get the family elders to support you as headman?”
“I don’t see the point. They all know me, and they all know Movey. They’ll make their decisions.”
His statement surprised the android dog listening outside. Movey may have discovered politics, but it did not sound as if Ranex had.
“Maybe, but when?” Steffin asked. “The village needs a headman to, well, you know, to resolve disputes, meet with the Master Traders, and make final decisions, and stuff. Shouldn’t you go see them and get them to meet to do that?”
“Actually, I expect Movey will. He really wants to be headman.”
“And you don’t?”
“Not really. I imagine it can be a pain. Dunwood used to complain about it all time.”
“Yeah, I heard him once say that if he had to listen one more time to Winnie complaining about Tibber stealing honey from her beehives, he was going to strangle her.”
“And the funny thing is, he wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t what?”
“Taking any honey. Tibber has a secret honey tree in the woods. He showed it to me once. He had no reason to take hers. Besides, he’s afraid of her. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to get into an argument with her if I could avoid it.”
“If you become headman, you probably won’t be able to. She’s always complaining about something.”
Ranex sighed. “I know.”
“So why don’t you just let Movey be the new headman?”
“I don’t think he’d make a good one. He’s too, well, I’m not sure of the word, but he always seems to be looking at how people can do something for him rather than just looking at them like people.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Steffin said. “He doesn’t like me much, I know. It’s probably because I can’t do anything for him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Ranex said. “You could probably teach him some humility by constantly beating him at jump disc like you have me.”
Steffin chuckled. “I don’t think he plays, and I’m not sure I’d like his company if he did.
“Why’s that?”
“He strikes me as the type that would try to cheat.”
Ranex laughed, but based on what MO-126 overheard from Movey earlier, he agreed with Steffin. Some people would do anything to win. The android dog found this difficult to understand. He felt that cheating to win a game would make the victory meaningless. Perhaps some humans were simply not intelligent enough to realize this. They were primitives, after all.