by John Varley
I started in the lobby outside our office. It was easy to pick up her scent there. She had been there for a few minutes, and there is no wind blowing through the lobby. There is a grill near the floor where air is sucked in. There is a grill near the ceiling where air comes out. I sniffed them both. She had not come or gone through the grills. I did not think she had. I could smell that the ducts behind the grills were dusty. Mary Smith had not had dust on her clothes when she entered the office.
I pawed the button for the elevator, and we waited. When it opened I went inside. I could smell her there. It was the slightly bitter, slightly juicy smell of her leprosy. It is a stronger smell than most humans have, except for the stenchers we track down and arrest. I was going to go down in the elevator with αChris, but then I sniffed again. The trace in the elevator was a little older than the one in the lobby. I came back out again and followed a trail to the stairway door. This trace was a little older than the one in the elevator. So she had gone up in the elevator, then walked down the stairway. Elementary, dear Sherlock!
(Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle made a movie called The Hound of the Baskervilles. Mr. Basil Rathbone took the role of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, my namesake. I do not like this movie. The hound is killed. He was half mastiff and half bloodhound, so he must have been a relative. I would like to glow in the dark like the hound did, but I do not think I would like to be painted with phosphorus. I do not know what phosphorus is. I have never smelled phosphorus. αChris says it is nasty stuff. He says it would burn my nose. I do not want my nose to be burned.)
Her spoor continued all the way down the stairs and out into the ground-floor lobby. There it became fainter. There it became mixed up with other smells. I was able to follow it outside and into the mall. In the mall I cast around and thought I could follow her a short distance in the direction away from our home. But I was not sure, and before long I lost even that faint trace. This made me sad because I do not like to lose a scent. I sat down and looked up at αChris. He patted my head and said he was sorry that he had not had me on the trail sooner. This made me feel a little better. I would not tell him he was stupid.
* * *
—
I did not want to tell of my visit to the home of the mother of αChris, but Penny says I should. So I will.
I do not like the mother of αChris, whose name is γAnna-Louise. She does not like me, either. I do not like the animals she keeps in her home. I do not have much use for reptiles other than to smell them and their shit, which is interesting. γAnna-Louise breeds dinosaurs. The dinosaurs she breeds are the kind that fly. Some are no bigger than squirrels. I like squirrels, but I do not like dino-squirrels. Some are as big as flycycles. Some are even bigger than flycycles. I do not like these, either.
The dinosaur I do not like the most is called Tiny. Tiny is a titanosaur. Tiny is very, very stupid. Tiny spends all her time eating. I think she even eats when she is sleeping. I have learned that cows chew their food again and again. I think this is very interesting. I would like to see this happen someday. I think Tiny chews her food again and again. She eats plants. She is too big and clumsy to catch squirrels or rabbits, so she has to eat plants, which are slow. One time when I was with αChris visiting γAnna-Louise, Tiny tried to eat me. She picked me up with her mouth. I was very frightened, and I cried out in fear. I did not like to cry out like a puppy, but I could not help myself. Tiny’s mouth smelled interesting, like water that has been standing and has frogs living in it, and like sulfur and wild onions. I wondered if this was going to be the last thing I ever smelled. This made me sad. I did not want this to be the last thing I ever smelled.
γAnna-Louise hit Tiny on the head with a big stick. Tiny’s brain must work very slowly, because she stopped lifting her head, and a moment later she dropped me. I am glad γAnna-Louise hit Tiny on the head with a stick, but I still do not like her.
Tiny is too old to have a pack. All her pack died away many, many years ago. Maybe a shitload or even a double shitload of years ago. I feel sad for Tiny because of this. No being should be without a pack. But I still do not like her. If Tiny did have a pack, I think she is so stupid that she might be a θtitanosaurus in the pack, or even a letter I do not know of. αChris says that the last letter is ω, omega. I think Tiny is probably an ωtitanosaur.
* * *
—
αChris knows I do not like to go to the dinosaur farm and so he told me to stay home. I know I am supposed to obey αChris, but when we are on a dangerous case like The Case of the Leprous Dame of Irontown I do not like to let him go off on his own. He is likely to get into trouble, and I need to be there to keep him safe. So I let him stumble down the stairs in the front of our apartment and listened for the slam of the door. Then I was up and out and down the back stairs.
Now is when being a very smart dog, a Cybernetically Enhanced Canine, comes in very handy. I have small devices in my head. I do not understand what these devices are, but I have always known how to use some of them. I have learned to use others. One of these devices I think of as a mouse. It is not a mouse, but that is a good way to think of it. This mouse can find the tiniest cracks to crawl through. These cracks are in the security machines that let people in and out of doors, or do not let them in or out. Most dogs are not allowed through doors without their masters. I can go through most doors.
I wear a beautiful collar all the time except when I am taking a bath. I do not like baths. This collar has shiny steel spikes in it, so anyone trying to bite my neck had better look out! But inside this collar is a device that calls out to doors and tells them to open. I cannot turn doorknobs or pull on handles. Sometimes I can push against a door to open it, but I do not need to. The device calls out to doors, and they open for me. Only CEC dogs have collars like this. Only smart dogs like me.
But the mouse is different. I have heard humans talking about programs. Some of these programs are called worms and some are called bots and some are called apps and some are called viruses. They are not really worms. They are not really viruses. I do not know what a bot is. An app is what is left after you have eaten part of an apple. Ha-ha! I like apples but would not like to eat them all the time. Unless there was a Bowser Bow-wow’s Bacon-flavored Doggie Snack inside. I must ask αChris to make me an apple with a Bowser Bow-wow’s Bacon-flavored Doggie Snack inside!
With my mouse I can walk or run through a world I do not really understand. It is like the map I have in my head. This is not a map I have made myself, because it shows buildings and streets and alleys and ducts where I have never been. But it is very clear. I think this is an app that someone has put into my brain. It is a map app. Ha-ha!
I can think of a place I want to go and the map app will show me a way to get there. I have learned that most humans have an app like this in their heads. This makes it easy for them to get around. I can see a path in my eyes. I have learned that this is not a real thing. It has no scent.
αChris does not have a map app in his head. This is because he is afraid someone will take over his mind. I do not understand this, but if αChris says it, it is probably true. Probably. Most likely. Possibly. But it makes αChris very slow and clumsy. If he did not have me to lead him to where he wants to go, he would always have to ask people for directions. He says this is what he used to do, before we became partners. He got lost a lot.
When I think about the mouse I find myself in a strange land that I do not understand. There are no scents there, so I do not love it, but I have found that it is very useful.
(Sherlock was very reluctant to tell me about this strange land of his, and I can see why. I don’t think anyone else is aware of just how much he is able to do in the cyber world. Because what he is describing is clearly some sort of access to digital realms where he really has no business.
(I did a little research and as far as I can tell he is not able to cause any real mischief when he goes sniffing [so to speak] around in the vir
tual world. And yet, no one realizes he can do the things he has clearly done, either. I will say more on this later.—PC)
One of the things I learned that I can do in my strange land is go places where no one can really go. I have not gone to many of these places yet because they frighten me. I am a brave dog, but this place worries me a little. That is because I cannot lay down a scent trail. When I turn around and try to go back, I cannot always easily see where I have been.
One of the places I visited was the inside of my collar.
Oh, I am so confused! It is not really the inside of my collar.
Perhaps Penny can explain these things.
(I’ll take it from here, Sherlock.
(I am not notably cyber-savvy myself, other than the everyday knowledge we all get in school and through life experiences. But apparently he has accessed the programming of his collar. It seems that he saw a virtual image of his collar and walked his virtual self into it. Once there he was able to intuit that certain codes could be changed. Without really knowing what he was doing, he reprogrammed his collar to open a lot more doors than it was originally intended to open. This opened vast new vistas in his real world. It enabled him to constantly surprise Chris Bach by his ability to show up in places he could not possibly have reached. This is how he was always able to beat Chris home from the office.
(As I said, Sherlock did not want to talk about this. He is afraid that if anyone learns what he can do, he will be forbidden to do it. I join him in this worry. I doubt that the authorities would be thrilled to learn that a mere dog is able to circumvent so much of their precious security. Few of them would realize that, in his own canine way, he is much smarter than they are.
(So we reached a deal, dog to human. I will keep this information under strong security until he gives me the okay to reveal it. This extends even to Chris, which was a painful and hard decision for Sherlock. We agreed that the story needs to be told in its entirety, in view of . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Sherlock.—PC)
When αChris goes to visit his mother he takes a train all the way out to a place called Pythagoras. Then he has to take another train some of the way back until he gets to a small stop that almost no one ever uses. On my first trip to the ranch this is the way we went. But my map app told me that there is a quicker way.
I left our apartment warren and hurried to the nearest air duct. It was only a short way down the corridor. I looked around to be sure no one was watching, and then I told my collar to tell the grate to open up. My collar pretended it was a maintenance robot, and the very small brain that controlled the grate believed my collar. The grate was very stupid. It opened with a springing noise. I went inside. It was a duct that a human could have crawled along on hands and knees. Since I was a much more sensible four-legged dog, I could run as fast as I wished.
It was windy in the duct. I liked the wind because it brought many interesting scents. I wanted to explore them but I ignored them because I was hot on the trail of a case. I followed my map app to an intersection of more ducts, then through a noisy place of fans. Finally I reached a place that hardly smelled of humans at all. It was an intersection where many machines came together and were sorted out by other machines I could not see. My map app told me where to get aboard a train car. The train car was not as comfortable as the train cars humans rode in. It was hard and clattery and not very clean. I sniffed it out thoroughly as the train started up, then settled down on the floor. I wished I had my comfortable blanket to lie on. But when I am on a case, I do not mind discomfort.
My collar told the train to slow down and stop, and I got off. I knew where I was. The next door I went through took me to a room just beyond the big room where Tiny the Stupid Titanosaurus was chewing her cud. I could smell her even through the shut door. I liked her smell, even though I do not like her, and even though it made me scared. A little.
I found a place to hide behind some sacks of dinosaur food. It was not food for Tiny. It was food for the ugly little flying dinosaurs that γAnna-Louise raised. She sold these ugly little dinosaurs. I do not know why anyone would want to buy one. They look too scrawny and bony to be worth eating. I wondered if their bones were like chicken bones, which smell good, but αChris says are not good for dogs to eat. He says a dog could choke on them. He is αChris, so he is probably right. Maybe. I will think more about this. Food is food.
The dinosaur food in the sacks smelled good. I thought about tearing one open and eating some. But that might give away that I was hiding behind the sacks. So I did not tear one open. Besides, maybe dinosaur food had chicken bones in it.
I curled up on one of the sacks where no one could see me. It was even more comfortable than my blanket back home. Maybe αChris would get me a sack of dinosaur food to sleep on. I tucked my nose up under my hind leg and went to sleep. I usually sleep when there is nothing else to do.
* * *
—
I woke up when αChris arrived on the elevator from the train stop. My map app said the stop was a long way overhead. I held still until he had passed into the room where Tiny the Stupid Titanosaurus lived. If αChris had been a dog, he would have smelled me. Humans cannot smell for shit. They can barely even smell shit. Ha-ha!
I told another air duct to open for me and followed my nose to the place where γAnna-Louise keeps her flying dinosaurs. I crept up on another grate but did not tell it to open. I could see a little through the grate. I could smell much more. I smelled many kinds of flying dinosaurs. I could hear the awful squawks they made. I smelled eggs, but they were not bird eggs or turtle eggs like we eat at home, though they smelled a little like turtle eggs. I was very interested. I would like to eat some of those eggs. Maybe when we solve The Case of the Leprous Dame of Irontown αChris can steal some dinosaur eggs from γAnna-Louise.
I saw αChris walk by and I moved along the air duct with him. He had passed through the aviary into the hatchery. There the smell of eggs was even stronger. I licked my lips. The two of them talked for a while about breeding flying dinosaurs. It was very boring. If they had talked about if they were good to eat, I would have paid attention. But they did not talk about that, just about how to select the best eggs. I could have told them that with one sniff. I like eggs.
Then they moved into the last rooms of the dino ranch. This was the apartment where γAnna-Louise ate and slept and pissed and shit and fucked. She had eaten something with pasta in it a few hours ago. Pasta and sausage. I licked my lips. I like pasta and sausage. Her piss and shit smelled healthy. She had not fucked in those rooms for a long time. I could still smell the flying dinosaurs and the dino shit, but not as strongly.
The grate here was higher up, and I could not get to it. But I could hear them. γAnna-Louise asked why I had not come. αChris told her he had left me in the Free Park where I was happy chasing balls from the automatic ball thrower. This was a lie. He had not left me in the park. γAnna-Louise told αChris to bring me along the next time he visited, and he said he would.
In your dreams.
They sat down, and I heard them pour glasses of poison to drink. I could smell that this was the clear poison known as vodka, not the brown poison known as bourbon. Poison is poison. Except for beer. There is only a little poison in beer.
Then αChris told her he was there to learn about Irontown. And I could smell the fear that burst out of her skin.
eight
My mother had never talked about her involvement in the big raid on Irontown that resulted from the Big Glitch. It was such a fiasco that I assumed she had spent the intervening years trying to forget all about it. But of course she couldn’t. It wasn’t her fault; all the investigative committees convened afterward agreed with that. She was exonerated. But in the only evaluation of the raid that mattered to her, she was guilty. And that was the court of inquiry in her own mind.
What I had hoped for in my visit was to pick her brains
about Irontown itself. As someone who had been high up in the planning stage, I figured she knew things that might come in handy for me.
It turned out she did. But first, to my amazement, she wanted to talk about the raid and the Big Glitch itself.
“I was the one who suggested the operation,” Mom said, taking another hefty belt of her moonshine. “That damn place was a blot on the city, on the damn planet, even.”
“Technically, Luna isn’t a planet,” I said.
“Don’t get technical on me. You always did that, even as a child.”
She glowered at me. Relations between me and my mother can be strained at times.
“I wanted to clean it up. Clear out the squatters, liberate the area, bring it all back into the civilized world.”
I didn’t point out that “liberating” would not be the word the squatters of Irontown would have used for the operation. More like “invading.” Or maybe “evicting,” or “terrorizing.”
“One warren at a time, that was my original plan. Stretch it out over maybe a year, maybe even two. Take one neighborhood, clean it up, empty it out, and make sure no one could get back in. Then move on to the next one. Use a small force of handpicked officers, give them extra training, even some paramilitary courses to make sure we showed up with overwhelming force. One of the cardinal rules of police work.”
She didn’t need to tell me that. She often seemed to forget that I had been a cop, too, once upon a time.
“It was that goddamn mayor,” she went on. “Up for reelection, needed to do something that would get on the news feeds and show the voters he was actually doing something while in office. He wanted it quick and dirty and, above all, ‘cinematic,’ as he put it. He didn’t quite have the nerve to say he actually wanted violence, but it was made clear to me that no one would really mind it if things got bloody. No deaths unless the eyecams would show clearly that the officer’s life was in danger.