An Android Dog's Tale

by D.L. Morrese

  ~*~

  The next morning, the parties split. Tallie went with Prett, the nursery android called Aunt Nettie, and her dog, Helper. Tam, MO-126, Bea, and MO-193 headed back toward the village of Stone Home where the latter two androids would attempt to delay the seemingly inevitable end of the corporation project on this planet. MO-126 found he no longer felt certain that this would be a bad thing.

  Six - Unacceptable Marks

  2,375 Years Later

  (Galactic Standard Year 238430)

  (Project Year 14877)

  In which things must not be written.

  The small, seaside village on the southern coast of the continent came as a surprise to Field Ops when one of the project’s orbiting satellites first noticed it fifty years ago. Despite all their efforts, bands of especially enterprising primitives sometimes ventured forth to start new settlements without corporate knowledge or approval. Less often, they succeeded. Those who came here had, and they called the village they built Riverplace, an appropriate if unimaginative name given its location. Field Ops immediately dispatched a surveillance team and periodically rotated replacements through ever since. The two androids currently on station reported the anomaly, initial signs of a type one scientific-discovery fault—the primitives here had developed a form of writing. Tam and MO-126 would attempt to mitigate the problem.

  MO-126 sniffed the air. “Smells like fish,” he commented to his partner as they approached the settlement with their gond-drawn wagon. The last two thousand years saw the spread of wheel technology, boats, and the use of copper, gold, and other metals. All of these remained sufficiently primitive to allow the project to continue, but its eventual termination grew more certain with each passing century.

  Their wagon, laden with trade goods, rumbled along the bank of the wide, flowing river to their left. To their right, not far in the distance, people picked ripe fruit from squat citrus trees.

  “Fish and citrus,” Tam said. “That’s what the primitives have here. Those and chickens. They trade with another village further along the coast for vegetables other things. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to mitigate this problem as soon as possible. If we don’t, it will spread.”

  Keep the project going. This remained the ultimate objective of everything they did and the criteria by which all their actions were measured. The corporation incorporated this goal into every android produced here. It formed part of their identities, an intricate component no less than fingers or fur. It should be enough, but sometimes MO-126 questioned. He wondered if he could choose a different meaning for his existence, his life. He did not know what that might be. Without thumbs, most kinds of creative efforts were unavailable to him, but there must be something other than maximizing corporate profits he could strive to accomplish.

  A scattering of outlying beam and stucco cottages marked the edge of the settlement. A few humans paused to regard the travelers as they passed by with their laden wagon. A boy at a well dropped the bucket he was filling and ran toward the village.

  “He’s probably going to tell the headman about us,” Tam said.

  “I’ll notify the team stationed here,” the android dog said.

  The reply came immediately. “They’re at the shore,” MO-126 relayed. “Ned’s telling stories to some of the villagers right now. They’ll meet us later. The resident NASH android posed as an elderly storyteller. Ned and his partner, a canine mobile observer he called Moby, were stationed here six years already. “He says you should use Trade Negotiation Contingency Protocol 1D until he has a chance to explain the situation.”

  “That’s standard in these situations, but you can acknowledge. It looks like the headman’s heard of our arrival. Here he comes now.”

  The old man who came to meet them smelled of fish. But then, many things here did to some extent. Fish hung drying on racks in the sun; they provided a major staple of their diet, and they played significantly in such industry as they possessed. Fish oil was their medicine of choice for just about any ailment, and it was a component of the glue and paint they used on their boats. Anything not smelling of fish smelled of citrus, or a nose-wrinkling combination of the two.

  “Master Trader, welcome. My name is Sydon. I’m the trade negotiator and arbiter for our village.”

  “Tam,” the trader said, introducing himself.

  “We can offer good trade to you, Trader Tam, fruit, dried fish, pickled fish, fish sauce, fish oil, fish paste, fish sausage, and various arts and crafts.”

  “Made from fish?” Tam speculated.

  The village elder raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “Fish? No. Shells, mostly. Many lovely and sometimes even useful things can be made with shells, although we also have some fine things made with fish leather. The other traders who visited us didn’t seem much interested in them. Perhaps you would like to see some?” he said hopefully.

  Sydon stepped aside to make way for a goat cart filled with orange fruit. The man leading it nodded a greeting and continued on toward a cluster of clapboard buildings.

  “No, whatever you normally trade will be fine,” Tam said. “Can we see what you have?”

  “Certainly. Just this way.”

  He turned and followed the course the goat cart took moments earlier. It angled off to one of the smaller buildings while Sydon led them to the largest. It was filled with baskets of fruit on wooden shelves that went from the stone floor to the three meter high rafters. If this amount of fresh, natural, organic fruit were for sale just a few dozen lightyears away, it would be worth as much as the ship that brought it there. Admittedly, that would be a small, automated transport, but it was still reasonably expensive because of its temporal stasis field generator. Those did not come cheap. Lockweed Intergalactic still held the patent on the design.

  The heavy scent of sweet citrus almost overwhelmed the android dog’s olfactory subsystem. Dogs are not natural fruit eaters and most find the odor—distracting, rather the way a human might regard the odor of a well-aged dead rat, which dogs tend to find compelling in a ‘let’s roll around on this because it’s so nice’ kind of way.

  Tam lifted an orange sphere from one of the baskets and examined it closely. He squeezed. He sniffed. He held it at arm’s length, eyed it suspiciously, and said, “Hmmm.”

  “Is there something wrong?” Sydon asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Tam replied. “May I borrow this? If we choose not to trade, I’ll make sure to return it to you.”

  “If you choose not to…. But these are fine fruit, I assure you.”

  Tam dropped the orange in his shoulder bag. “Yes. They may be. For now, I’d like to see some more of your charming village.” Which it was in a rustic sort of way, if one overlooked the pervasive odor of fish, the incontinent livestock, and the open sewage ditches. It did have a nice view of the ocean.

  “Um, sure. I can show you—”

  “Oh, I don’t want to trouble you. I’m sure you have much to do. If I can leave my wagon here, I’ll just wander around on my own for a while.”

  “If that is what you wish.” He seemed nervous and regarded Tam with a look of uncomfortable resignation. MO-126 took this as a normal reaction. Traders never hesitated to trade for his fruit before.

  “For now,” Tam said. “I’ll come find you later, if that would be all right.”

  Sydon nodded his agreement and left them outside by the trader’s wagon. When he disappeared around the corner of the building, they contacted Ned.

  “I’m on my way there. See you in a few minutes,” the resident android storyteller said.

  Tam shooed away a chicken perched on his wagon. It fluttered to the ground with an annoyed squawk. Some unspoken agreement seemed to apply in most villages, which allowed chickens, dogs, goats, and other domestic beasts to enjoy an interspecies truce and freedom to roam unmolested among the huts and hovels of their ostensible owners. It even applied to cats—as long as anyone was watching them.

  The trade android made
a pretense of examining the contents of his wagon so as not to appear to be waiting for someone he could not possibly be expecting.

  When Ned arrived with his faithful canine companion, he and Tam exchanged greetings verbally, in case anyone might be watching, and then continued with more important matters via radio transmissions.

  “I’ve been in the fruit warehouse,” Tam said. “I saw no signs of writing.”

  “They’re not using it there, yet. They’re still a bit wary of the idea, I think. Change, you know. It scares some people.”

  “That should help. How are they using it?”

  “Record keeping, believe it or not. It’s simple and clever. A fisherman or farmer or whatever comes in, and a clerk makes a mark on a soft clay tablet identifying who it is, what he brought, and how much. Then, when the stuff is traded, the recording clerk marks what it was traded for and keeps a tally for each person. It’s more like accounting than writing, but it will lead to that, and to money. It pretty much has to. It will become too unwieldy otherwise.”

  “Where did they get the idea?”

  “A young primitive came up with it. He’s the clerk. They’ve started calling him the Numbers-Keeper. They used to call him Ronny.”

  “Okay. Let’s meet this wonder boy and see what he’s up to.”