by Huskyteer
Skarra Rat-Crone. Healer, elder, wise woman, scribe to the gods, gatherer of secrets. Yes, he knew her from the stories. She had been the midwife when Merra birthed the world. She found the dragons’ lair by trapping one of their shadows, and drew the poison from Feyat’s wounds after he slew them. She sewed Fox a new tail after he lost his to Rayfe in a bet, saved him from drowning after he tried to drink the ocean, and stitched him back together on probably half-a-dozen different occasions. She knew the uses of every plant, and where they might be found. Sometimes, though, she took on a more sinister aspect. She had a pet crow that flew overhead watching the other gods and whispered their secrets back to her. She poisoned Rayfe after he slept with her grand-daughter. Through her magic, she spread plague and famine among the tribes that displeased her.
“Aye, I think you know who I am,” she continued. “Now, why don’t I tell you what I see, hm? That weasel was right about one thing: we can’t do the same with the next world. There was a rot in it, a sickness.”
“Careful, old rat.” Merra again, with a growl in her voice. “That is my world you speak of.”
“Oh hush. No mother’s love ever kept a cub from sickness, an’ no father’s pride shielded it from death. Mother’s love and medicine, though, now that’s a different thing.” The rat drew on her pipe again. “If we make the world like before, they’ll war and war and soon kill themselves off again. Oh, we could hide the stuff they used this time, but they’d just think of something worse. I bet you could come up with an idea or two here and now, couldn’t you, ducks?” She patted Jake’s arm and his ear flicked; he was grateful his injury gave him an excuse not to reply.
“So it’s got to be different, an’ it’s the people that’re the problem. Now, we could make ’em smarter, but then they’d just get themselves in a jam twice as fast, much as I hates to admit it. Or we could make ’em dumber, but then they’d never make it this far. Smart, dumb, rich, poor, it’s the fighting that’s the trouble. So, young fox, why’d they fight so much, eh?”
Jake shrugged mutely, splaying his paws. To his left, Merra sighed impatiently. “Because each wants what the other has, like cubs with toys,” the she-wolf said.
“Aye, cubs with toys. So, how d’ye keep ’em from fighting?”
“Show them love, teach them to share.”
“Hah! Easier said than done, even with two cubs. With a worldful? Forget it.”
“Fine. Give them all the toys they want, then.”
“Weren’t you listening, girl? As long as fox has a toy, dog’ll want it. Give ’em both more, you’ll make things worse, not better. No, there’s only one answer to the riddle. You’ll never see it, though. What about you, fox kit? Dog got your tongue too?” She let the question hang in the air for a moment, then made a show of slapping herself between the eyes. “What am I thinking, the poultice is still on. Stay, stay, stay, stay, don’t move, and…now.”
With that, she tugged the cloth off. At the same time, something tingled and crackled in his nose, and suddenly smells were pouring in once more. “It’ll be tender for a while,” he heard the rat say. “Don’t you go scratching at it or I’ll smack it again myself. Now, have you got my answer?”
It took him a few seconds to gather his wits, during which he was all too aware of Skarra staring at him.
“Okay. Wow, huh. So, first, thank you for healing my muzzle.”
“You’re welcome, Jacob of Fox. Chest too, mind, though that was just a nick. Now, stop your stalling. I’m too old for that.”
“All right. There’re three solutions.” He paused briefly, half-expecting an interruption, but none came. “First one, no toys. Works in the analogy, but not for real because that’d mean people have no lands, or crops, or whatever. Scratch it. Second one, no cubs. No fighting either, I guess, but not what we’re looking for. Third one, one cub, all the toys. No fighting, no whining. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
She gave a high-pitched laugh. It hurt his ears. “Exactly, exactly what I want! And you know what it means, yes?” she asked, poking at his chest with a claw.
“One species for the whole planet,” he answered flatly.
“One species for the whole planet,” she echoed. “Think on it! No more warrin’ over who gets the gold, or the water, or the oil. No more gangs scrappin’ it out in the big cities. Everyone workin’ together, part of the same society. Part of the same family. It’d be peace.”
“It’d be genocide.”
“Pfft. Shoddy thinkin’, cub; you know better’n that. Can’t murder people who ain’t even been born. But what happened down there?” She pointed in the direction of Earth. “There’s your genocide. How many billions dead? How many species? That’s a whole genus gone. You willing to do the same to the next world?”
Jake didn’t look directly at her. “And the one species, just taking a wild guess here, that’d be the rats?”
“Makes sense, don’t it? We’re gregarious, smart, adaptable. Can eat anything, live anywhere. Nobody else could do it, ’cept maybe the dogs, and do you really want to hand the next world over to them? Oh, I’m open to reason, ’course, but I think you’ll find I don’t get persuaded so easy. Not even by you, my little engineer.”
“There any room for otters in this new world of yours?”
She twitched her whiskers. “Otters? Not askin’ about foxes?”
He swished his tail humourlessly. “Oh, I knew we’d never make the cut. Guess they’re out too. Well, it’s an interesting proposal, but I’ll have to think about it.” He tapped the side of his head. “I’m open to reason.”
“Don’t you get sharp with me, young fox. You’re gonna need stitching up again soon, I reckon, an’ next time won’t be for free.” She put a hand on his shoulder and pushed herself to her feet, joints clicking. “I’m right an’ you know it. So you think on it.” She started hobbling off down the corridor, then paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Just don’t think too long.”
Jake sat quietly until she was out of sight before breathing out and letting his head tilt back. The motion set him twisting very slowly through the air, to his mild surprise. In the rat’s grip he’d almost forgotten that he was weightless. Merra extended an arm to him, and after a moment’s hesitation he took it and lowered himself back down next to her.
“You should not have done that,” she said. “Skarra does not forgive, and her vengeance can be terrible. Even the strongest must be humble before her.”
“Eh, what’s she going to do? I’m pretty sure I’m not long for this world—I’m no doctor but I think hallucinations are a bad sign, no offence—and I already lost everyone that matters to me. I’m basically a dead man walking.”
Merra shook her head. “There is always something more that can be taken.”
“You’re probably right. Let’s maybe talk about something else, though.”
“Very well. Have you reconsidered my offer?” she asked.
He yipped a laugh. “Spirit’s tears, you don’t give up, do you? Still no on the bumping uglies, but maybe I’m coming round on the rest. I mean, so far you’re the only one that doesn’t want to erase my family, so you’re ahead on points. So, are you guys taking turns or something? It feels like I’m being speed-dated.”
“There are…formalities. I think I should not say more.”
“Yeah, sure. You know who’s up next, at least?”
“I do not know. Perhaps Fox.” She had the courtesy to look away.
“Guess we’ll see. I’m gonna go check the comms, maybe eat something. Had enough gods for a while,” Jake said, drifting up gently and bracing himself against the wall.
“Be wary, Jacob of Fox.” She paused. “And no, I do not give up.”
A retort came to his lips, but suddenly he didn’t have the strength for it. He nodded instead and kicked off, letting his paws do the work for a while. He whipped back up the corridor, breathing more deeply as the unsettling scents of weasel and wolf faded, replaced by oil and dust and
the over-sweet powdered drinks. Rat was still strong here, a doubly unpleasant reminder. He looked away as he passed Thomas’s berth.
The control room was much less grand than it sounded: a handful of terminals, a couple of workspaces mounted on the walls, some electronics, and an A/V rig. Most of it had been brought up years ago and was obsolete compared to his laptop, but it was here and still worked so it had stayed. He checked the network quickly but it was still down: all of the Earthside stations had dropped within minutes, and he doubted there was much left of them. But there was a ham radio, and if anyone was going to get through it’d be on that.
As he picked up the headset, he heard the door slide shut behind him. The scent of dog reached him. He did not move.
“Well, what do we have here?” The voice was dangerously light and friendly. “Smells like Fox. Looks like Fox. Standing still and hoping I’ll go away, also straight out of the Fox playbook.” The air moved behind him and the scent grew stronger. “Is this going to be a short conversation?”
“You’re Rayfe.”
“Sounds like Fox too. That’s disappointing; I had hopes for you.”
“You’re not real,” Jake said. His tail brushed against something warm and he drew it back quickly.
“An interesting gambit. Problem is, it opens you up to a response of ‘If I weren’t real could I do…this!’” Jake flinched, but the bite did not come. After a moment, the voice continued. “But that would be entirely too obvious, and I would never stoop to such depths, goodness me no. Why don’t you turn around, hm? With such a delightful tail, I can’t be responsible for my actions if you don’t.”
Jake let go of the headset, leaving it to drift, and gripped the wall, turning himself carefully. A couple of feet below him and to one side, the dog was waiting. His first thought was that Rayfe looked smaller than he’d expected: not a hulking brute of a mastiff, but leaner, sharper. Like Feyat he wore a loincloth, although his was a dirty black.
“What a revelation!” Rayfe exclaimed, following up with a big, toothy grin. His tail waved deliberately. “Isn’t this nice? You do look comfortable, bobbing up there like an otter. I think I’ll come join you.” The dog kicked off and floated up next to him, rocking slowly back and forth as though in the ocean. For a moment it reminded him of Glen, and his ears flattened.
“Look, I’m not in the mood for this. What do you want?” he demanded.
“To get laid, duh,” Rayfe replied promptly. “Oh, not with you, don’t worry, you’re ‘not in the mood’. But Merra, now—you smelled her? Like honey and fresh hay. Makes you just want to roll in her, mm-mmm. And those titties!” He kissed his fingertips, smacking his lips. “Like little dumplings.”
“Go tell her that,” Jake said. “I hear women love being compared to food.”
“Aw, does someone feel excluded from the conversation?” Rayfe slid an arm around Jake’s shoulder; the fox shrugged it off. “Let’s talk about men, then. Specifically, Feyat. How can you be so ripped and yet so straight? Do you know the story about how I fooled him into thinking I was a woman?”
Jake nodded, not meeting the dog’s eyes.
“Hah, that was the best. I got him to sleep with me—and weasels may be macho idiots but they’ve got bags of stamina, let me tell you—and then he wandered the land for a year looking for the ‘mysterious beauty’ he’d lost.” The dog sniggered. “Of course, then I found out he knocked me up, which was no picnic, let me tell you.”
“What?” Jake stared, confused. He knew this story well; he’d asked for it often enough to worry his parents.
“What d’you mean, ‘what’? I’m giving you the good stuff here,” Rayfe said.
“No, I mean that’s not the way the story goes,” Jake replied. “You got him to sleep with you, sure, but you didn’t get pregnant. That’d just be weird.”
“Oh, it was weird all right. But where d’you think otters came from? They’re not called ‘river dogs’ for nothing.”
“That’s just gross.”
“Yep. Sex is gross, childbirth is gross, people are gross, life is gross. Sometimes people cut the gross stuff out of my stories, but they’re not the same without it. Which brings me to my question: what was he like?”
Jake was lost. “Feyat?”
“No, fox-for-brains, my grandson, or great-grandson, or whatever. The one you were boinking within the bonds of matrimony, which personally I think is a great perversion.”
“His name was Glen, you asshole, and he’s dead.”
“Lot of that going around. Death, I mean, but plenty of assholes up here too now. My question stands.”
Jake threw his paws up. “He was smart and funny and kind, worth more than all of you lot put together. He loved wine, could drink me under the table. He taught math. He couldn’t sing and didn’t care. Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to know?”
“For now,” Rayfe said mildly. “You still think I’m not real?”
“Spirit’s not real. You’re just ridiculous. Gods are a lazy way to explain the unknown, and you don’t even explain it.”
“Sure I do. Look, you lived on a world where there were…how many different sentient species? Talking foxes, dogs, horses, rats, even pangolins, which I frankly think I made up when I was drunk.”
Jake’s tail swished in anticipation. “Ye-es, and?”
“Doesn’t it strike you as a bit of a coincidence? Like, how are there, simultaneously, all those intelligent species?”
“You’re behind the times,” the fox replied with a triumphant grin. “This is evolutionary biology 101. Anthropomorphic principle. One,” he said, counting it off on his fingers, “we have to be intelligent to raise the question. Two, the conditions to produce intelligent life are very rare. Three, when you see intelligent life, those conditions must have been present in the environment. Four, they would’ve applied to multiple species, so when you find one intelligent species you’ll generally find a whole cluster. QED.”
“And just what were those conditions, would you say?”
“I don’t know, ask a biologist. Oh wait, you can’t, the last one killed himself.”
“And now you’re using his death to dodge the answer that’s staring you in the face. Smooth, kid, very smooth. You sure you’re not one of mine? Say, though,” Rayfe continued, “isn’t it a pity that he did? He could’ve cleared all this up in a heartbeat. Not the whole evolution thing, gosh, that seems way too hard. But whether we’re really here or just…figments. But I guess the conditions for him to kill himself were just present in the environment.”
Jake looked away. “Yeah, thanks, I’d almost forgotten that the world had ended.”
“That probably didn’t help either. Man, this is depressing. You got any wine up here?”
“What? No.”
“Really? C’mon, anywhere people live there’s always wine. Or beer, or rum, or something.”
“This is a space station,” Jake explained slowly. “It’s not allowed. We’re on duty all the time. And it costs a crazy amount to bring each pound of weight up here. They don’t send us booze.”
“Yeah, but there’s food, right? Fruit, vegetables, even if it’s just mush, you can ferment it. Any time you have a bunch of men with time on their hands, you’ve got booze.” The invisible current brought Rayfe closer until they were almost touching. “You must have something tucked away. You can trust me. I mean, who am I gonna tell?”
“There’s nothing,” said Jake, though he wondered. Thomas would never keep a still, but maybe one of the previous crews had set one up. Perhaps he could sniff it out later.
“What a sad time we live in. The youth of today, no respect for tradition. Someone should do something about it. Shake the world up!” He locked eyes with Jake. “You got any thoughts on the matter?”
“On making moonshine?”
Rayfe tapped the fox’s nose lightly. “Don’t be coy, it doesn’t suit you.”
“I’ve had a few offers,” the fox replied. “Are
you going to make a pitch?”
“Nah, not my style. Making a new reality sounds like way too much work. And where would be the fun in breaking the rules if I made ’em in the first place?”
Jake looked back up at the dog. “Are you sure? Is this some kind of reverse psychology thing? Because the others seemed pretty intent. Like, assault and battery intent.”
“They’re gods. They can’t stand the thought of someone else being more powerful. Forget assault, it moves them to murder. It’s in their nature.”
“But not in yours?”
Rayfe shrugged, brushing against Jake’s shoulder. “Being contrary is in my nature. When they zig, I zag. When they suck, I blow. When they come—”
“Wait, wait, shut up,” Jake interrupted. “You said something there, about their nature. What if there were only one god?”
“Well that is an interesting thing to say, which you came up with entirely unprompted. Just one god, dear me. Such a strange arrangement. I wouldn’t dwell on it. Here, let me distract you with my masculine wiles,” the dog said, putting a paw on Jake’s side. The fox’s fur bristled. He put his paws on Rayfe’s chest, pads flat against the god’s dappled fur, and pushed. To his considerable surprise, Rayfe drifted away. Jake thumped backwards into a display panel.
He crouched instinctively, but there was no retaliation. If anything, Rayfe looked pleased, tail wagging as he came to a halt in defiance of mere physics. “Someone’s a little agitated, I see. Did I make you uncomfortable? Give you a little god-boner? I can always kiss it better,” he offered, licking his lips suggestively. It didn’t ring true, though, and after a moment Jake understood why: the dog didn’t smell aroused—at least, not more than before—and for that matter neither did he. He shook his head.
“There’s something not right here. Someone missing. I’ve seen you and Skarra and so on, but not Spirit. How’d that happen? I mean, no offence but you guys are kind of obsolete. Stories for kids, and not that many kids either. But Spirit? They’re a capital-G God. They’re worshipped—were worshipped by billions.”