by Jack Dann
The store consisted of one small room in the front of a drab house. On unpainted pine shelves were brands of goods that Malcolm had never heard of. “Oh! You’re with one of those nice dogs,” the tired, plump woman behind the counter said, leaning down to pat Max, who had approached her for that purpose. It seemed to Malcolm that the dog was quite mechanical about it and was pretending to itself that nothing caressed it at all. He looked around the place, but he couldn’t see anything or anyone that offered any prospect of alliance with him.
“Colonel Ritchey wants a three-pound can of Crisco,” he said, bringing the name out to check the reaction.
“Oh, you’re helping him?”
“You could say that.”
“Isn’t he brave?” the woman said in low and confidential tones, as if concerned that the dog would overhear. “You know, there are some people who would think you should feel sorry for a man like that, but I say it would be a sin to do so. Why, he gets along just fine, and he’s got more pride and spunk than any whole man I’ve ever seen. Makes a person proud to know him. You know, I think it’s just wonderful the way these dogs come and fetch little things for him. But I’m glad he’s got somebody to look out for him now. ’Cept for us, I don’t think he sees anybody from one year to the next—’cept summers, of course.”
She studied Malcolm closely. “You’re summer people too, aren’t you? Well, glad to have you, if you’re doin’ some good for the colonel. Those people last year were a shame. Just moved out one night in September, and neither the colonel nor me or my husband seen hide nor hair of them since. Owed the colonel a month’s rent, he said when we was out there.”
“Is he the landlord?” Malcolm asked.
“Oh, sure, yes. He owns a lot of land around here. Bought it from the original company after it went bust.”
“Does he own this store, too?”
“Well, we lease it from him now. Used to own it, but we sold it to the company and leased it from them. Oh, we was all gonna be rich. My husband took the money from the land and bought a lot across the street and was gonna set up a real big gas station there—figured to be real shrewd—but you just can’t get people to live out here. I mean, it isn’t as if this was ocean-front property. But the colonel now, he’s got a head on his shoulders. Value’s got to go up someday, and he’s just gonna hold on until it does.”
The dog was getting restless, and Malcolm was worried about Virginia. He paid for the can of Crisco, and he and Max went back up the sand road in the dark. There really, honestly, didn’t seem to be much else to do.
At his front door, he stopped, sensing that he should knock. When Virginia let him in, he saw that she had changed to shorts and a halter. “Hello,” she said, and then stood aside quietly for him and Max. The colonel, sitting pertly forward on one of the chairs, looked up. “Ah, Mr. Lawrence, you’re a trifle tardy, but the company has been delightful, and the moments seemed to fly.”
Malcolm looked at Virginia. In the past couple of years, a little fat had accumulated above her knees, but she still had long, good legs. Colonel Ritchey smiled at Malcolm. “It’s a rather close evening. I simply suggested to Mrs. Lawrence that I certainly wouldn’t be offended if she left me for a moment and changed into something more comfortable.”
It seemed to Malcolm that she could have handled that. But apparently she hadn’t.
“Here’s your Crisco,” Malcolm said. “The change is in the bag.”
“Thank you very much,” the colonel said. “Did you tell them about the grocery deliveries?”
Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t remember. I don’t think so. I was busy getting an earful about how you owned them, lock, stock, and barrel.”
“Well, no harm. You can tell them tomorrow.”
“Is there going to be some set time for me to run your errands every day, Colonel? Or are you just going to whistle whenever something comes up?”
“Ah, yes. You’re concerned about interruptions in your mood. Mrs. Lawrence told me you were some sort of artist. I’d wondered at your not shaving this morning.” The colonel paused and then went on crisply. “I’m sure we’ll shake down into whatever routine suits best. It always takes a few days for individuals to hit their stride as a group. After that, it’s quite easy—regular functions, established duties, that sort of thing. A time to rise and wash, a time to work, a time to sleep. Everything and everyone in his proper niche. Don’t worry, Mr. Lawrence, you’ll be surprised how comfortable it becomes. Most people find it a revelation.” The colonel’s gaze grew distant for a moment. “Some do not. Some are as if born on another planet, innocent of human nature. Dealing with that sort, there comes a point when one must cease to try; at the camp, I found that the energy for overall success depended on my admitting the existence of the individual failure. No, some do not respond. But we needn’t dwell on what time will tell us.”
Ritchey’s eyes twinkled. “I have dealt previously with creative people. Most of them need to work with their hands; do stupid, dull, boring work that leaves their minds free to soar in spirals and yet forces them to stay away from their craft until the tension is nearly unbearable.” The colonel waved in the direction of the unbuilt houses. “There’s plenty to do. If you don’t know how to use a hammer and saw as yet, I know how to teach that. And when from time to time I see you’ve reached the proper pitch of creative frustration, then you shall have what time off I judge will best serve you artistically. I think you’ll be surprised how pleasingly you’ll take to your studio. From what I gather from your wife, this may well be a very good experience for you.”
Malcolm looked at Virginia. “Yes. Well, that’s been bugging her for a long time .I’m glad she’s found a sympathetic ear.”
“Don’t quarrel with your wife, Mr. Lawrence. That sort of thing wastes energy and creates serious morale problems.” The colonel got to his feet and went to the door. “One thing no one could ever learn to tolerate in a fellow Kriegie was pettiness. That sort of thing was always weeded out. Come, Max. Come, Moritz. Good night!” He left.
Malcolm went over to the door and put the chain on. “Well?” he said.
“All right, now, look—”
Malcolm held up one finger. “Hold it. Nobody likes a quarrelsome Kriegie. We’re not going to fight. We’re going to talk, and we’re going to think.” He found himself looking at her halter and took his glance away. Virginia blushed.
“I just want you to know it was exactly the way he described it,” she said. “He said he wouldn’t think it impolite if I left him alone in the living room while I went to change. And I wasn’t telling him our troubles. We were talking about what you did for a living, and it didn’t take much for him to figure out—”
“I don’t want you explaining,” Malcolm said. “I want you to help me tackle this thing and get it solved.”
“How are you going to solve it? This is a man who always uses everything he’s got! He never quits! How is somebody like you going to solve that?”
All these years, it occurred to Malcolm, at a time like this, now, she finally had to say the thing you couldn’t make go away.
When Malcolm did not say anything at all for a while but only walked around frowning and thinking, Virginia said she was going to sleep. In a sense, he was relieved; a whole plan of action was forming in his mind, and he did not want her there to badger him.
After she had closed the bedroom door, he went into the studio. In a corner was a carton of his painting stuff, which he now approached, detached but thinking. From this room he could see the floodlights on around the colonel’s house. The colonel had made his circuit of the yard, and one of the dogs stood at attention, looking across the way. The setting hadn’t altered at all from the night before. Setting, no, Malcolm thought, bouncing a jar of brown tempera in his hand; mood, si. His arm felt good all the way down from his shoulder, into the forearm, wrist, and fingers.
When Ritchey had been in his house a full five minutes, Malcolm said to himself aloud, �
��Do first, analyze later.” Whipping open the front door, he took two steps forward on the bare earth to gather momentum and pitched the jar of paint in a shallow arc calculated to end against the aluminum fence.
It was going to fall short, Malcolm thought, and it did, smashing with a loud impact against one of the whitewashed stones and throwing out a fan of gluey, brown spray over the adjacent stones, the fence, and the dog, which jumped back but, lacking orders to charge, stood its ground, whimpering. Malcolm stepped back into his open doorway and leaned in it. When the front door of Ritchey’s house opened he put his thumbs to his ears and waggled his fingers, “Gute Nacht, Herr Kommandant,” he called, then stepped back inside and slammed and locked the door, throwing the spring-bolt latch. The dog was already on its way. It loped across the yard and scraped its front paws against the other side of the door. Its breath sounded like giggling.
Malcolm moved over to the window. The dog sprang away from the door with a scratching of toenails and leaped upward, glancing off the glass. It turned, trotted away for a better angle, and tried again. Malcolm watched it; this was the part he’d bet on.
The dog didn’t make it. Its jaws flattened against the pane, and the whole sheet quivered, but there was too much going against success. The window was pretty high above the yard, and the dog couldn’t get a proper combination of momentum and angle of impact. If he did manage to break it, he’d never have enough momentum left to clear the break; he’d fall on the sharp edges of glass in the frame while other chunks fell and cut his neck, and then the colonel would be down to one dog. One dog wouldn’t be enough; the system would break down somewhere.
The dog dropped down, leaving nothing on the glass but a wet brown smear.
It seemed to Malcolm equally impossible for the colonel to break the window himself. He couldn’t stride forward to throw a small stone hard enough to shatter the pane, and he couldn’t balance well enough to heft a heavy one from nearby. The lock and chain would prevent him from entering through the front door. No, it wasn’t efficient for the colonel any way you looked at it. He would rather take a few days to think of something shrewd and economical. In fact, he was calling the dog back now. When the dog reached him, he shifted one crutch and did his best to kneel while rubbing the dog’s head. There was something rather like affection in the scene. Then the colonel straightened up and called again. The other dog came out of the house and took up its station at the corner of the yard. The colonel and the dirty dog went back into the colonel’s house.
Malcolm smiled, then turned out the lights, double-checked the locks, and went back through the hall to the bedroom. Virginia was sitting up in bed, staring in the direction from which the noise had come.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Oh, changed the situation a little,” Malcolm said, grinning. “Asserted my independence. Shook up the colonel. Smirched his neatness a little bit. Spoiled his night’s sleep for him, I hope. Standard Kriegie tactics. I hope he likes them.”
Virginia was incredulous. “Do you know what he could do to you with those dogs if you step outside this house?”
“I’m not going to step outside. Neither are you. We’re just going to wait a few days.”
“What do you mean?” Virginia said, looking at him as if he were the maniac.
“Day after tomorrow, maybe the day after that,” Malcolm explained, “he’s due for a grocery delivery I didn’t turn off. Somebody’s going to be here with a car then, lugging all kinds of things. I don’t care how beholden those storekeepers are to him; when we come out the door, he’s not going to have those dogs tear us to pieces right on the front lawn in broad daylight and with a witness. We’re going to get into the grocery car, and sooner or later we’re going to drive out in it, because that car and driver have to turn up in the outside world again.”
Virginia sighed. “Look,” she said with obvious control, “all he has to do is send a note with the dogs. He can stop the delivery that way.”
Malcolm nodded. “Uh-huh. And so the groceries don’t come. Then what? He starts trying to freight flour and eggs in here by dog back? By remote control? What’s he going to do? All right, so it doesn’t work out so neatly in two or three days. But we’ve got a fresh supply of food, and he’s almost out. Unless he’s planning to live on Crisco, he’s in a bad way. And even so, he’s only got three pounds of that.” Malcolm got out of his clothes and lay down on the bed. “Tomorrow’s another day, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to worry any more about it tonight. I’ve got a good head start on frustrating the legless wonder, and tomorrow I’m going to have a nice clear mind, and I’m going to see what other holes I can pick in his defense. I learned a lot of snide little tricks from watching jolly movies about clever prisoners and dumb guards.” He reached up and turned out the bed light. “Good night, love,” he said. Virginia rolled away from him in the dark. “Oh, my God,” she said in a voice with a brittle edge around it
It was a sad thing for Malcolm to lie there thinking that she had that kind of limitation in her, that she didn’t really understand what had to be done. On the other hand, he thought sleepily, feeling more relaxed than he had in years, he had his own limitations. And she had put up with them for years. He fell asleep wondering pleasantly what tomorrow would bring.
He woke to a sound of rumbling and crunching under the earth, as if there were teeth at the foundations of the house. Still sleeping in large portions of his brain, he cried out silently to himself with a madman’s lucidity, “Ah, of course, he’s been tunneling!” And his mind gave him all the details—the careful transfer of supporting timber from falling houses, the disposal of the excavated clay in the piles beside the other foundations, too, for when the colonel had more people . . .
Now one corner of the room showed a jagged line of yellow, and Malcolm’s hands sprang to the light switch. Virginia jumped from sleep. In the corner was a trap door, its uneven joints concealed by boards of different angles. The trap door crashed back, releasing a stench of body odor and soot.
A dog popped up through the opening and scrambled into the bedroom. Its face and body were streaked, and it shook itself to get the sand from its coat. Behind it, the colonel dragged himself up, naked, and braced himself on his arms, half out of the tunnel mouth. His hair was matted down with perspiration over his narrow-boned skull. He was mottled yellow-red with dirt, and half in the shadows. Virginia buried her face in her hands, one eye glinting out between spread fingers, and cried to Malcolm, “Oh, my God, what have you done to us?”
“Don’t worry, my dear,” the colonel said crisply to her. Then he screamed at Malcolm, “I will not be abused!” Trembling with strain as he braced on one muscle-corded arm, he pointed at Malcolm. He said to the dog at command pitch: “Kiss!”
One-Trick Dog
by Bruce Boston
How many tricks can your dog do? Sometimes, one is more than enough . . .
Writer and poet Bruce Boston won the 1985 Rhysling Award for his poem, “For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets,” further solidifying his reputation as one of the best science-fiction poets in the business. His work appears frequently in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Night Cry, Amazing, and elsewhere. His most recent book is a collection of his poetry, Nuclear Futures.
* * *
Mr. Wayne was taking his daily exercise, walking Arthur around the lake in Nevley Park, when the sky darkened and a light snow began to fall. A few flakes fluttered against his cheeks. He could feel the cold through his heavy topcoat. He enjoyed the park when it was deserted, but at his age he couldn’t afford a chill. He thumbed the control in his pocket. Arthur turned left onto a bridge which would cut their return journey by a good half-mile. Mr. Wayne followed.
It was a low, narrow-structure, lightly arched, with concrete pilings and flanged metal guard rails which leaned over the water. Several lampposts stretched along its length remained unlit. As he approached the center of the bridge, Mr. Wayne noticed a man leaning on
one railing. He too had a dog, which was on a leash. With a robodog there was no need for a leash, but Mr. Wayne knew that some people liked to pretend their pets were real.
The man stood at one side of the bridge, no more than ten feet wide, staring across the water. His dog stood at the other side. The leash, stretched tautly between then, blocked Mr. Wayne’s passage.
As Arthur neared the pair, he gave a growl from low in his throat. A programmed reaction. Mr. Wayne flipped a control. Arthur stopped and sank back on his haunches.
The stranger looked up. He was a tall, large-boned man. A parka, its hood tightly cinched against the cold, made his face appear round and moonlike. Mr. Wayne nodded toward the dog, expecting the man to rein him in so he could pass.
“Ah, I see you’ve noticed Roscoe. Just got him this morning. Say hello, Roscoe.” The dog turned toward Mr. Wayne. He raised one paw and gave a syrupy yelp. “He’s GT’s latest model, top of the line.”
“Very nice,” Mr. Wayne nodded.