Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  The night we brought Martin home, Benji met us at the door.

  “Hi Benji,” Jennifer said.

  “Hi Momma,” he said back. “Hi Daddy.” He looked at Martin, bundled in Jen’s arms. “Hi Baby.”

  “The baby’s name is Martin,” I said and then added, “You can call him Marty, if you like.” Benji had problems with pronouncing “in,” it tended to sound like “im.” It was some kind of tongue control thing, something that they hadn’t quite gotten right in his treatment.

  “Mardy Baby,” Benji said softly, reverently. “Hi Mardy Baby,” he said and then, “Come on, Baby. Baby bed.”

  “What?” Jen asked, head tilted to one side, but Benji had already started off down the stairs into the cool basement. “Honey, I’m going to put Marty to bed. Can you, uh . . . ”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said and waited for her to start up the stairs before I followed Benji down the creaking stairs to the basement. I found him wagging his tail, his nose nudging a spare plastic pad across the bare concrete floor, until it was next to his own. He liked to sleep down there because it was cool and quiet. The one he’d nudged into place was his old doggie bed, the one I should’ve thrown out months before when I bought his new one.

  “Me Bed,” he said and touched the old, tattered pad with one paw. Then he touched the nice new one and said, “Baby Bed. Mardy Baby Bed.”

  I was a little stunned: Benji was sharing? I never expected that from a dog, and it made me smile. “Oh, that’s really sweet, Benji. But, uh, Marty’s not a dog. Baby boys don’t sleep in the basement. It’s too cold and dirty. But it’s so nice of you… . You think of him as a brother, huh? Aw, good boy,” I said, patting him on the head. “Such a good boy.”

  He sat beside the two pads, looked down at them, then up at me. “Baby Bed No?”

  “Right, Benji. Baby Bed No.”

  He drooped, tail slumped, and sunk to the concrete floor. Later, on hot summer nights when I found him sleeping beside Marty’s crib, I remembered him nosing the spare pad into place, and some weird guilty feeling would well up so fast I could barely drive it back down before having to examine it.

  They played together so well, Benji and Marty, both of them scooting around the house on all fours. For a while, they really were like any two brothers. Benji would sniff Marty’s bottom occasionally and call Jen or me over: “Baby Mardy make poo!” Marty would push the buttons on a toy piano, and random songs would play. Benji would squeeze Tinky and Jiggy dolls between his teeth, and they’d shout out greetings to Marty, provoking giggles and applause from that bright little blond toddler of ours. He always wanted to share his dinner with Marty, and his doggy biscuits, no matter how many times we explained that dog food and people food are different.

  Benji really loved Marty, loved him as much as any brother would have. Somehow that made me forget all those awkward moments, the questions like, “Why Mardy Baby no tail?” and “Benji no birthday party?” and “Mardy Baby poo inside?” The time Benji tried to eat off the kitchen table, and sent our dinner crashing down by accident. Jen used to breastfeed Martin at the table, while she ate her own dinner sometimes, and Benji was perplexed by this, sometimes more than once a week. “Marty Baby eats what? Benji too? Benji eat what too?”

  “No, Benji,” Jennifer said, “You’re a dog. He’s a baby. Babies have milk, but dogs have dog food. This milk is not for you. It’s only for Marty, see?”

  “No, Benji,” he repeated ruefully. He’d started repeating that phrase every time someone said it, even gently. It’s just the way everyone talks to dogs, isn’t it? When they jump up onto guests, or try hump your leg?

  “That’s right. Benji, no. Good boy,” I said. He lay down on the cool tile floor beside his bowl and thumped his tail once, just once.

  With a kid, the years pass so quickly you lose track. One day, you’re burping a baby; the next you have a little boy sitting beside you with a book in his lap, reading.

  “… and . . . then . . . then the . . . the boy and his dog . . . went home . . . ” Martin mumbled. I smiled. I’d mouthed the words along with him, but he’d done it all by himself.

  “Good job!” I patted him softly on the back. “You got every word. Did you like the story?”

  “Yup,” he said. “I wanna read it again,” he said.

  “Okay, let’s . . . ”

  “No,” Marty insisted, shaking his head. “I want to read it with Benji.” He hopped down off the couch, onto the carpet and toward the dog.

  Benji turned his head and said, “You . . . read with me?”

  “Sure Benj,” he replied.

  “Okay,” Benji said, and he sat up. “You read, I listen. Read slow.”

  “Mmm hmm. Okay, page one,” Marty said carefully. “The story of Timmy and Spot,” he said, from memory. He knew the first few pages of the picture book by heart. “‘There was a boy. His name was Timmy. There was a dog. Its name was Spot.’ Now you read.”

  Benji said, “I can’t read. But I ’member: ‘There was boy. His name Timmy. There was dog. His name Spot.’”

  Marty said, “Noooo, Benji. ‘There was a dog. Its name was Spot.’”

  Benji blinked, stared at the page—at the picture, I suppose, since he wasn’t supposed to be able to read, not ever. “‘There was dog. Its name Spot.’”

  “Good,” Marty said. “Now you’re gettin’ it . . . ”

  Things started to go wrong around that time. The day that sticks out in my memory was this afternoon when I had some buddies over to watch the game on our new NetTV, while Jen and Marty were out someplace. Charlie, Deke, Demarco, and Peter were there, and we were all hollering at the screen. I don’t know when Benji came into the room, but when the ads came up, and Charlie and Deke hurried to the kitchen to get us all some cold beers, Ben tapped Peter on the leg with one paw.

  “Oh, hey, Benji. How are you, boy?” Peter asked absently, the way anyone asks any dog, sentient or not. He patted Ben on the head for a few seconds.

  “Okay. Question okay? Ask you?”

  “Sure Benji,” he grinned. He’d probably never met a dog as inquisitive as Benji—I never have. “What is it?”

  “You Korean?”

  “Well, I’m Korean-American, yeah.” I wondered how Benji had known that. Was it just a guess?

  “Why Korean eat dog?”

  Demarco and I both turned and looked at Peter, who sat there with one eyebrow raised. Demarco started to chuckle as Peter glanced at each of us before turning back to Benji. “Say what?”

  Benji said the question again: “Why Korean eat dog?”

  Peter looked up at me, puzzled. I shrugged and gave him a baffled look.

  Demarco was doubled over now, laughing hysterically. “Racist dog!” he said, before bursting into laughter again. “That’s funny, man. They should put you on TV, Benji! The racist talking dog show!”

  Peter started laughing along. “Ha, I’d watch that show,” he said. Then he said, “Look, Benj, last time I visited Korea, I didn’t see any dog restaurants. All my relatives think eating dog is terrible. They say it’s mostly old guys who do it, and I never asked them why. So I dunno why anyone would eat dog. I guess they think it tastes good or something. But hey, nobody’s gonna eat you, ’kay?”

  Benji blinked, processing this. “Dogs think people taste good too.”

  Which . . . none of us knew what to say. We all sat there in silence, until Demarco sniffed and said, “Yeah, man, well, dogs think their own crap tastes good, right?”

  “Sure,” Benji said, and we all burst out laughing as Deke and Charlie walked back into the room with the beers. But Benji just looked from one of us to the next, his eyes quite serious. Then the ads were done, and the announcer was talking about why Nick Lingonfelder wasn’t in the game this week, and whatever it was Benji wanted to say, he kept it to himself, and just went to the back door, muttering, “Can I go out?” as he passed me.

  “Uh, sure, Benj,” I said and went to open the back door. He went out
without so much as a glance toward me. I remember thinking that wasn’t like him. When I went back into the living room, Demarco was telling Charlie and Deke about his idea for the TV show about Benji the Racist Dog.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, guys, I have no idea where he picked that up. But you know, he’s young. You know how kids can be.”

  “Kids?” Charlie mumbled, flopping onto the couch. “He’s a dog, Tim.” He handed me a beer.

  I nodded. “He’s . . . yeah, he’s a souped-up dog, though.”

  “Mmmm, souped-up dog . . . tasty,” Deke said, and Demarco burst out laughing again.

  Peter chucked a sofa cushion at him, grinning. “You better talk to him, though,” he said. “Some people I know would take that shit the wrong way.”

  That evening, I found Jen and Benji in the kitchen, talking. Benji’s head was lowered, the way he did when we caught him breaking the house rules.

  “No, Benji, it’s okay,” Jen said, patting him on the head. “It’s an understandable question. But . . . well, you know how some dogs bite people? But not all dogs, right? Not all dogs are the same, right? It’s the same with people. Not all people of the same kind are the same.”

  “Oh.” Benji said, and then he wagged his tail once, which was his way of nodding. “Not all dogs same.” He’d learned that lesson trying to chat with the neighborhood dogs, none of whom were sentientized.

  “Lots of dogs can’t watch TV, like you do,” Jen said, absentmindedly fiddling with one of Marty’s cartoon DVD cases on the kitchen table.

  “Right,” he said, and he asked, “But why not?”

  Before she could answer him, I stepped into the room and said, “Is Benji watching TV?”

  Jen looked up. She looked tired. “Yeah, I leave the dog channel on when I’m out. It’s supposed to help his English.”

  “I talk good soon,” Benji said, and like that it clicked in my head: The shift to four- and five-word sentences I’d observed, the slightly improved syntax. Dogs with the treatment he’d gotten weren’t supposed to advance that far, let alone become fluent, but at the rate he was going, he’d be speaking like Marty within the year.

  “Yes, Benji. You’re really improving. Now, your Daddy and I need to talk about something private, Benji. Could you excuse us?”

  “Okay,” Benji said. “Night,” he told each of us one by one, and then he padded off into the basement.

  When the creaking on the stairs ended, Jen and I both exhaled. We hadn’t even realized we’d been holding our breath.

  “It’s like . . . ” she started, but then she hesitated, though I knew what she was going to say.

  “… like having two kids?” I suggested.

  She nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Well, that was why we had him done, you know . . . ”

  She nodded, and it hit me how much older she looked now, than when we’d decided against adoption, and when she’d finally agreed to the dog treatment. If we’d known . . . well, there was no point in thinking about that, was there?

  “So, the whole Koreans eating dogs thing . . . you think he picked that up on TV, maybe?”

  Jen tapped the kitchen table. “Maybe? I’ve never watched any myself.” I looked at the DVD case sitting on the table in front of her, and it hit me: With Marty, we checked everything out first. If he asked for a movie, we checked the parental warnings. There was a nanny lock on the TV, too, a smart lock set to block anything PG-13 or higher when he was alone in the room. But we hadn’t set a lock for when it was just Benji alone.

  “Well, maybe we should.”

  The next morning, I found Benji on the couch in front of the TV. A commercial was on. I’d never seen an ad made especially for dogs. Before that day, I’d only ever glimpsed these weird canine-athletics shows Benj loved, that always sent Benji straight to me, insistently repeating, “Let’s play fetch! Let’s play fetch! Wanna play fetch?”

  In this ad, a pair of dogs was trotting alongside one another, as soft romantic music played in the background. There was also this soft panting sound, and a kind of rhythmic thumping that didn’t fit the music. “Lonely? Humping legs not good enough for you? Are you the only talking dog in your neighborhood? Most sentientized canines have trouble finding suitable mates. But we can help you. Call PetMate today.” An online contact code flashed across the bottom of the screen, as the screen cut smoothly, if briefly, to one dog mounting another; as the video quickly faded to black, a faint, slightly offensive aroma filled the room, and then quickly dissipated. Beside me, Benji was suddenly panting.

  Great, I thought. Next he’ll be asking me for pocket money, so he can go out and…

  But the screen shifted abruptly to a stage set with wide, soft-looking red couches. On one sat a beautiful grey-furred German Shepherd, a big chew-bone under her front paws, cans and packets of some new brand of dog food, Brainy Dog Chow, visible in various places around her.

  “Good morning,” started the voiceover, “and welcome back to Sparky’s Couch!” The camera zoomed in on Sparky’s face as she—her voice was somehow feminine—sniffed at the camera, and the TV’s odifers emitting what I swear was the faint aroma of dog-butt. Suddenly, that weird smell I’d noticed sometimes in the living room made sense. I’d thought it was just Benji.

  “I’m your host, Sparky Smith,” the German Shepherd said in astonishingly perfect English. She must have had the top-of-the-line treatment. “I hope you’re comfortably seated on your families’ couches, too. Well, yesterday you heard about the plight of Korean dogs from the first Korean sentientized dog, Somi. But it wouldn’t be fair to talk about Korea and ignore problems closer to home… .”

  My jaw dropped. She sounded like a human TV announcer. The cost of her treatment must have been exorbitant . . . or had she been gotten one of those pricy in vitro mods? Looking at Benji, I felt like . . . was it wrong of us to get him the cheaper treatment? Did he realize he’d never be able to talk like Sparky?

  “Well, according to today’s expert, America has a serious dog-mistreatment problem as well! Even here, dogs suffer every day. Everyone please welcome Duncan Mallory, from Iowa,” Sparky declared.

  The camera cut to an audience full of dogs lounging on the terraced studio audience floor area. They were all barking rhythmically, oof, oof, oof, like it was applause, and Benji was barking along with them. A squat brown pug waddled onstage and then hopped up onto the couch beside Sparky. As they sniffed one another in greeting, a new dog-butt aroma wafted from the TV odifers. Well, I guess it was new: It smelled the same as the last one, to me.

  “Welcome, Duncan! It’s nice to have you here,” Sparky said.

  “Thanks, Sparky. I’m happy to be here.” The pug’s voice was even clearer than Sparky’s, with very little accent. It was weird.

  “Please tell us how you discovered about the suffering of American dogs, Duncan.”

  Melodramatically sad piano music began to play as the dog spoke. “Well, I was surfing the internet, and thought that I’d look up the ASPCA—you know, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

  “Right,” Sparky replied. The acronym appeared at the bottom of the screen and stayed in place what seemed like a long time. Maybe it was to let even the least-enhanced dogs—dogs like Benji—to memorize the shapes of the letters.

  “After searching around their webpage, I discovered something incredible,” he said. The audience and Sparky—and Benji—panted expectantly. “Millions of dogs are killed with poison injections every year, right here in America. It’s been going on for decades, too.”

  All of the dogs in the audience yelped in horror. Sparky covered her nose with a paw and made a whining sound. Then she asked, “Why?”

  “Because they’re homeless. Nobody owns them, and nobody wants them, so they’re killed,” the pug explained, his voice turning a little angry. “In some states, they can still do that even to sentientized dogs . . . but everywhere in America, nonsentientized dogs die this way every day.”

&nb
sp; The audience began whining, and Benji joined them. The sad music continued as a video montage filled the screen. At first it was just ankles and knees, which confused me until I realized it was dog’s eye view. The room was filled with a vaguely metallic smell, mixed with the bite of chemical cleaning solution and, faintly, some other offensive aroma—like old piss and sickened animal turds. Onscreen flashed the faces of miserable dogs framed by the bars of cages, one after another in an interminable sequence. The camera entered another room, where a dog lay on its side on a table, its legs visible hanging over the edge from above. Benji whined softly, I think unaware that he was doing it.

  “This is where they inject the dogs,” Duncan explained.

  This was too much, I decided, and I reached for the NetTV remote next to Benji’s paw.

  Benji stopped whining along with the audience and looked at me in surprise. “Why? “Why what?”

  “Why . . . ” He paused, as if trying to figure out what he was asking about. Why turn the TV off? Why do they kill dogs that way? Why is the world so unfair? He whined again, this time less unselfconscious. His head hung down, his eyes wide and sorrowful.

  “Benji, I dunno what to tell you. We try to treat you well, but not everyone in the world is like us.”

  Benji didn’t say anything, but he stared at me with this piercing look, as if my explanation wasn’t good enough.

  “Look, those dogs would . . . go hungry. They would be homeless and starve,” I said.

  Benji sat there, looking at me. He knew the word homeless. Whenever we went to the vet’s downtown, we always passed a couple of homeless people. He had talked to one of them, some old war vet who’d had PTSD and couldn’t stand to live indoors anymore.

  “You don’t kill homeless people,” Benji said softly.

  “No, Benj, we don’t. Some people probably wish we did, but we don’t. Because they’re people.”

  Benji whimpered at me, and snuffed a little, then looked up at me and said, “Am I a people?”

  “Of course you are, Benji,” I said, without even pausing to think. I didn’t add the rest of what I was thinking, You can talk. You can think. He turned and looked at me, his eyes like those of a dog wall-eyed from sneaking a half-box of forbidden, dog-toxic chocolate.