The Best of Nancy Kress

by Nancy Kress

  “Make some bread on the platform.”

  Nothing. Maybe the platform wasn’t user-friendly.

  “Make some bread.”

  After a moment, loaves tumbled out of the wall. “Enough! Stop!”

  Mangy had rushed over to the bread, tearing at it, and the other dogs were going wild. I picked up one loaf, put it on the platform, and said, “Make the rest of the bread go away.”

  It all dissolved. No wonder the dogs were wary; I felt a little dizzy myself. A sentence from some long-ago child’s book rose in my mind: Things come and go so quickly here!

  I had no idea how much Blue could, or would, do on my orders. “Blue, make another room for me and this one dog. Away from the other dogs.”

  “No.”

  “Make this room bigger.”

  The room expanded evenly on all sides. “Stop.” It did. “Make only this end of the room bigger.”

  Nothing.

  “Okay, make the whole room bigger.”

  When the room stopped expanding, I had a space about forty feet square, with the dog cages huddled in the middle. After half an hour of experimenting, I got the platform moved to one corner, not far enough to escape the dog stench but better than nothing. (Law #1: Take what you can get.) I got a depression in the floor filled with warm water. I got food, drinking water, soap, and some clean cloth, and a lot of rope. By distracting Mangy with bits of bread, I got rope onto her frayed collar. After I got into the warm water and scrubbed myself, I pulled the poodle in. She bit me. But somehow I got her washed, too. Afterwards she shook herself, glared at me, and went to sleep on the hard floor. I asked Blue for a soft rug.

  He said, “The other humans did this.”

  And Blue killed them anyway.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  The big windowless room had no day, no night, no sanity. I slept and ate when I needed to, and otherwise I worked. Blue never left. He was an oversized, all-seeing eye in the corner. Big Brother, or God.

  Within a few weeks—maybe—I had Mangy trained to come when called, to sit, and to follow me on command. I did this by dispensing bits of bread and other goodies. Mangy got fatter. I didn’t care if she ended up the Fat Fiona of dogs. Her mange didn’t improve, since I couldn’t get Blue to wrap his digital mind around the concept of medicines, and even if he had I wouldn’t have known what to ask for. The sick puppy died in its cage.

  I kept the others fed and watered and flooded the shit out of their cages every day, but that was all. Mangy took all my time. She still regarded me warily, never curled up next to me, and occasionally growled. Love was not happening here.

  Nonetheless, Blue left his corner and spoke for the first time in a week, scaring the hell out of me. “This dog behaves correctly.”

  “Well, thanks. I tried to…no, Blue…”

  Blue floated to within a foot of Mangy’s face, said, “Follow,” and floated away. Mangy sat down and began to lick one paw. Blue rose and floated toward me.

  “This dog does not behave correctly.”

  I was going to die.

  “No, listen to me—listen! The dog can’t smell you! It behaves for humans because of humans’ smell! Do you understand?”

  “No. This dog does not behave correctly.”

  “Listen! How the hell can you learn anything if you don’t listen? You have to have a smell! Then the dog will follow you!”

  Blue stopped. We stood frozen, a bizarre tableau, while the robot considered. Even Mangy stopped licking her paw and watched, still. They say dogs can smell fear.

  Finally Blue said, “What is smell?”

  It isn’t possible to explain smell. Can’t be done. Instead I pulled down my pants, tore the cloth I was using as underwear from between my legs, and rubbed it all over Blue, who did not react. I hoped he wasn’t made of the same stuff as the Dome, which even spray paint had just slid off of. But, of course, he was. So I tied the strip of cloth around him with a piece of rope, my fingers trembling. “Now try the dog, Blue.”

  “Follow,” Blue said, and floated away from Mangy.

  She looked at him, then at me, then back at the floating metal sphere. I held my breath from some insane idea that I would thereby diminish my own smell. Mangy didn’t move.

  “This dog does not be—”

  “She will if I’m gone!” I said desperately. “She smells me and you…and we smell the same so it’s confusing her! But she’ll follow you fine if I’m gone, do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “Blue…I’m going to get on the platform. See, I’m doing it. Raise the platform very high, Blue. Very high.”

  A moment later my head and ass both pushed against the ceiling, squishing me. I couldn’t see what was happening below. I heard Blue say, “Follow,” and I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting. My life depended on a scrofulous poodle with a gloomy disposition.

  Blue said, “This dog behaves correctly.”

  He lowered my platform to a few yards above the floor, and I swear that—eyeless as he is and with part of his sphere obscured by my underwear—he looked right at me.

  “This dog does behave correctly. This dog is ready.”

  “Ready? For…for what?”

  Blue didn’t answer. The next minute the floor opened and Mangy, yelping, tumbled into it. The floor closed. At the same time, one of the cages across the room dissolved and a German shepherd hurtled towards me. I shrieked and yelled, “Raise the platform!” It rose just before the monster grabbed me.

  Blue said, “What to do now? This dog does not behave correctly.”

  “For God’s sakes, Blue—”

  “This dog must love.”

  The shepherd leapt and snarled, teeth bared.

  I couldn’t talk Blue out of the shepherd, which was as feral and vicious and unrelenting as anything in a horror movie. Or as Blue himself, in his own mechanical way. So I followed the First Law: Take what you can get.

  “Blue, make garbage again. A lot of garbage, right here.” I pointed to the wall beside my platform.

  “No.”

  Garbage, like everything else, apparently was made—or released, or whatever—from the opposite wall. I resigned myself to this. “Make a lot of garbage, Blue.”

  Mountains of stinking debris cascaded from the wall, spilling over until it reached the dog cages.

  “Now stop. Move my platform above the garbage.”

  The platform moved. The caged dogs howled. Uncaged, the shepherd poked eagerly in the refuse, too distracted to pay much attention to me. I had Blue lower the platform and I poked among it, too, keeping one eye on Vicious. If Blue was creating the garbage and not just trucking it in, he was doing a damn fine job of duplication. Xerox should have made such good copies.

  I got smeared with shit and rot, but I found what I was looking for. The box was nearly a quarter full. I stuffed bread into it, coated the bread thoroughly, and discarded the box back onto the pile.

  “Blue, make the garbage go away.”

  It did. Vicious glared at me and snarled. “Nice doggie,” I said, “have some bread.” I threw pieces and Vicious gobbled them.

  Listening to the results was terrible. Not, however, as terrible as having Vicious tear me apart or Blue vaporize me. The rat poison took all “night” to kill the dog, which thrashed and howled. Throughout, Blue stayed silent. He had picked up some words from me, but he apparently didn’t have enough brain power to connect what I’d done with Vicious’s death. Or maybe he just didn’t have enough experience with humans. What does a machine know about survival?

  “This dog is dead,” Blue said in the “morning.”

  “Yes. Make it go away.” And then, before Blue could get there first, I jumped off my platform and pointed to a cage. “This dog will behave correctly next.”

  “No.”

  “Why not this dog?”

  “Not big.”

  “Big. You want big.” Frantically I scanned the cages, before Blue could choose another one like Vicious. “This
one, then.”

  “Why the hell not?” Blue said.

  It was young. Not a puppy but still frisky, a mongrel of some sort with short hair of dirty white speckled with dirty brown. The dog looked liked something I could handle: big but not too big, not too aggressive, not too old, not too male. “Hey, Not-Too,” I said, without enthusiasm, as Blue dissolved her cage. The mutt dashed over to me and tried to lick my boot.

  A natural-born slave.

  I had found a piece of rotten, moldy cheese in the garbage, so Blue could now make cheese, which Not-Too went crazy for. Not-Too and I stuck with the same routine I used with Mangy, and it worked pretty well. Or the cheese did. Within a few “days” the dog could sit, stay, and follow on command.

  Then Blue threw me a curve. “What to do now? The presentation.”

  “We had the presentation,” I said. “I don’t need to see it again.”

  “What to do now? The presentation.”

  “Fine,” I said, because it was clear I had no choice. “Let’s have the presentation. Roll ’em.”

  I was sitting on my elevated platform, combing my hair. A lot of it had fallen out during the malnourished years in the camp, but now it was growing again. Not-Too had given up trying to jump up there with me and gone to sleep on her pillow below. Blue shot the beam out of his sphere and the holo played in front of me.

  Only not the whole thing. This time he played only the brief scene where the big, patchy dog pulled the toddler back from falling into the cesspool. Blue played it once, twice, three times. Cold slid along my spine.

  “You want Not-Too…you want this dog here to be trained to save children.”

  “This dog here does not behave correctly.”

  “Blue…How can I train a dog to save a child?”

  “This dog here does not behave correctly.”

  “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we haven’t got any fucking children for the dog to practice on!”

  Long pause. “Do you want a child?”

  “No!” Christ, he would kidnap one or buy one from the camp and I would be responsible for a kid along with nineteen semi-feral dogs. No.

  “This dog here does not behave correctly. What to do now? The presentation.”

  “No, not the presentation. I saw it, I saw it. Blue…the other two humans who did not make the dogs behave correctly…”

  “Killed.”

  “Yes. So you said. But they did get one dog to behave correctly, didn’t they? Or maybe more than one. And then you just kept raising the bar higher. Water rescues, guiding the blind, finding lost people. Higher and higher.”

  But to all this, of course, Blue made no answer.

  I wracked my brains to remember what I had ever heard, read, or seen about dog training. Not much. However, there’s a problem with opening the door to memory: you can’t control what strolls through. For the first time in years, my sleep was shattered by dreams.

  I walked through a tiny garden, picking zinnias. From an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

  I screamed. Clawed my way upright. The dogs started barking and howling. Blue floated from his corner, saying something. And Not-Too made a mighty leap, landed on my platform, and began licking my face.

  “Stop it! Don’t do that! I won’t remember!” I shoved her so hard she fell off the platform onto the floor and began yelping. I put my head in my hands.

  Blue said, “Are you not operative?”

  “Leave me the fuck alone!”

  Not-Too still yelped, shrill cries of pain. When I stopped shaking, I crawled off the platform and picked her up. Nothing seemed to be broken—although how would I know? Gradually she quieted. I gave her some cheese and put her back on her pillow. She wanted to stay with me but I wouldn’t let her.

  I would not remember. I would not. Law #5: Feel nothing.

  We made a cesspool, or at least a pool. Blue depressed part of the floor to a depth of three feet and filled it with water. Not-Too considered this a swimming pool and loved to be in it, which was not what Blue wanted (“This water does not behave correctly”). I tried having the robot dump various substances into it until I found one that she disliked and I could tolerate: light-grade motor oil. A few small cans of oil like those in the dump created a polluted pool, not unlike Charleston Harbor. After every practice session I needed a bath.

  But not Not-Too, because she wouldn’t go into the “cesspool.” I curled myself as small as possible, crouched at the side of the pool, and thrashed. After a few days, the dog would pull me back by my shirt. I moved into the pool. As long as she could reach me without getting any liquid on her, Not-Too happily played that game. As soon as I moved far enough out that I might actually need saving, she sat on her skinny haunches and looked away.

  “This dog does not behave correctly.”

  I increased the cheese. I withheld the cheese. I pleaded and ordered and shunned and petted and yelled. Nothing worked. Meanwhile, the dream continued. The same dream, each time not greater in length but increasing in intensity. I walked through a tiny garden, picking zinnias. From an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

  And woke screaming.

  A cat. I had had a cat, before the War. Before everything. I had always had cats, my whole life. Independent cats, aloof and self-sufficient, admirably disdainful. Cats—

  The dog below me whimpered, trying to get onto my platform to offer comfort I did not want.

  I would not remember.

  “This dog does not behave correctly,” day after day.

  I had Blue remove the oil from the pool. But by now Not-Too had been conditioned. She wouldn’t go into even the clear water that she’d reveled in before.

  “This dog does not behave correctly.”

  Then one day Blue stopped his annoying mantra, which scared me even more. Would I have any warning that I’d failed, or would I just die?

  The only thing I could think of was to kill Blue first.

  Blue was a computer. You disabled computers by turning them off, or cutting the power supply, or melting them in a fire, or dumping acid on them, or crushing them. But a careful search of the whole room revealed no switches or wires or anything that looked like a wireless control. A fire in this closed room, assuming I could start one, would kill me, too. Every kind of liquid or solid slid off Blue. And what would I crush him with, if that was even possible? A piece of cheese?

  Blue was also—sort of—an intelligence. You could kill those by trapping them somewhere. My prison-or-sanctuary (depending on my mood) had no real “somewheres.” And Blue would just dissolve any structure he found himself in.

  What to do now?

  I lay awake, thinking, all night, which at least kept me from dreaming. I came up with two ideas, both bad. Plan A depended on discussion, never Blue’s strong suit.

  “Blue, this dog does not behave correctly.”

  “No.”

  “This dog is not operative. I must make another dog behave correctly. Not this dog.”

  Blue floated close to Not-Too. She tried to bat at him. He circled her slowly, then returned to his position three feet above the ground. “This dog is operative.”

  “No. This dog looks operative. But this dog is not operative inside its head. I cannot make this dog behave correctly. I need a different dog.”

  A very long pause. “This dog is not operative inside its head.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can make another dog behave correctly. Like the presentation.”

  “Yes.” It would at least buy me time. Blue must have seen “not operative” dogs and humans in the dump; God knows there were enough of them out there. Madmen, rabid animals, druggies raving just before they died, or were shot. And next time I would add something besides
oil to the pool; there must be something that Blue would consider noxious enough to simulate a cesspool but that a dog would enter. If I had to, I’d use my own shit.

  “This dog is not operative inside its head,” Blue repeated, getting used to the idea. “You will make a different dog behave correctly.”

  “Yes!”

  “Why the hell not?” And then, “I kill this dog.”

  “No!” The word was torn from me before I knew I was going to say anything. My hand, of its own volition, clutched at Not-Too. She jumped but didn’t bite. Instead, maybe sensing my fear, she cowered behind me, and I started to yell.

  “You can’t just kill everything that doesn’t behave like you want! People, dogs…you can’t just kill everything! You can’t just…I had a cat…I never wanted a dog but this dog…she’s behaving correctly for her! For a fucking traumatized dog and you can’t just—I had a dog I mean a cat I had….I had….”

  —from an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

  “I had a child!”

  Oh, God no no no…It all came out then, the memories and the grief and the pain I had pushed away for three solid years in order to survive…Feel nothing…Zack Zack Zack shot down by soldiers like a dog Look, Mommy, here I am Mommy look…

  I curled in a ball on the floor and screamed and wanted to die. Grief had been postponed so long that it was a tsunami. I sobbed and screamed; I don’t know for how long. I think I wasn’t quite sane. No human should ever have to experience that much pain. But of course they do.

  However, it can’t last too long, that height of pain, and when the flood passed and my head was bruised from banging it on the hard floor, I was still alive, still inside the Dome, still surrounded by barking dogs. Zack was still dead. Blue floated nearby, unchanged, a casually murderous robot who would not supply flesh to dogs as food but who would kill anything he was programmed destroy. And he had no reason not to murder me.